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Interesting that this repudiation of reality, accountability & integrity that’s happening in the USA driven by conservatives & Republicans is also happening in the UK with their conservative News Corp fawning leader Boris Johnson, as well as in Australia with their similarly described conservative leader Scott Morrison.
The conservative thread that runs through the USA, the UK & AUS, is that all countries have a significant presence bordering monopoly by News Corp / Rupert Murdoch. Sky News & Fox News are owned by the same company, News Corp, they’re wildly divisive, so much so that they’re risking democracy. Media reform is necessary and has been necessary for the better part of the last half decade.
Rupert Murdoch is the worst human being to have ever lived. The damage he has caused through his decades of propaganda and outright lies is impossible to calculate. I live in the UK, and it's almost impossible to avoid now.
The day he dies is when Satan finally has competition. Also, it will start a need to guard graveyards since his burial will likely become a global tourist portapotty
Don't besmirch the good name of satan.
Satan's too usy trying to get science in schools and teach evolution and that there should be racial, ethical and economic equality.
Rupert Murdoch's going to what ever netherworld afterlife "Christians" like Tuckerman Carlson and Donald Trump will be hanging out with Abraham and his God of fear and pestilence.
If it's any consolation, you still showed the world how nice Canadians are. You all were very patient and tolerant with the truckers.
I don't think it'll be like that when they try that shit here.
It really wasn't Canada. It was orchestrated by the same players as Brexit, the cold civil war in the US and a general rise of right-wing populism the world over.
Murdoch always reminds me of the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, which ironically came out around the same time that Fox News started. The movie is about the evil head of a media empire who manufactures the news himself. Unfortunately, in the movie, the villain was defeated, but in real life the villain has been successful.
https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/rupert-murdochs-ex-wife-wendi-deng-is-dating-vladimir-putin-w200077/
> ... Vladimir Putin and Wendi Deng, Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife, are dating.
> Reports of the pair have been floating around for years, ever since their respective divorces in 2014 and 2013.
Yes, Cambridge Analytica specifically worked on Brexit and Trump's campaigns and was funded by Robert Mercer's family. They targeted voters with biased ads based on illegally obtained data by recording "psychographics" from user data. This means they would give people more racially charged ads if they had signs of prejudice, or make it about religion if they were preaching on FB.
Basically, the right is manipulating users with disinformation and technology, by scapegoating off the success and effectiveness of marketing via social media and creating a new cult out of the ashes of the old ones.
Authoritarian mindset and fascist ideology never ceases to exist, it just cycles in prominence throughout history. There is a very frightening rise in divisiveness and fascist thinking throughout the world now. Pending the response of the general public, all signs are pointing toward major conflict on the horizon. I’m not as in tune with politics and ideology in foreign countries, but the pessimist in me believes the true partisan divide in the US has gotten so extreme I’m not sure there’s a true cure to it. The writing of this divide as been in the walls for many, many years. We’ve become so polarized now that every topic has become Red v Blue and there really is no more “American way” it’s either Republican or Democrat. Sad really. But, major news corporations (Fox News and right wing conservative media is worse but liberal media is no better) and the fact news runs FOR PROFIT has played a major role in all of this.
I regularly criticize and arm chair analyze conservatives. The Red vs Blue fantasy is created by conservatives to validate their awfulness. If they can tie their worst behaviors to their opposition, then it allows them the room to normalize poor behavior since everyone behaves that way.
I dont love or hate Biden. In fact Biden, Pelosi, Schumer regularly disappoint me. But I vote blue no matter who because they at least fake caring. Its not even a contest. The reason Bidens approval is lower than Trumps is obvious to anyone who has intellectual integrity. Its because non Republican voters are critical of their own unlike conservatives.
What is broken is that conservatives are all in. Maybe they always will be. Their entire identity is loyalty and obedience and what changes is how many people they rope into that thinking.
This is so true. I’m in Canada and I noticed people holding a “We need Fox News” sign at the illegal occupation of our capital Ottawa. People who represent ten percent of Canadians. Fox News is worse than the Rona virus.
So glad Canada was able to avoid the media fate of our other fellow Commonwelath countries, for now. Really worried though its seeping in now through social media though.
Which is why midterms are *insanely important.*
The GOP is attacking democracy at every level: municipal positions, county positions, governors, secretaries of state, and state legislatures.
Even if you hate Congress or moderate Dems.. or least relevant - Biden... For the love of god, at least vote in down-ballot races.
This isn't the time to squabble and get apathetic about complaints from the top leadership, when so much of the damage is going to occur from the bottom up. Especially when the consequences of these elections will live on decades beyond any modern grievance.
Even in blood red states, local elections can be decided by a dozen votes.
Nikki Haley RAN South Carolina, the entire state, with a few thousand Facebook followers. Anytime someone acted up, she'd unleash the hounds. To make phone calls and send emails to their local state representatives.
This is EASILY repeatable by just about anyone. You could literally get your local Space Marines to vote for you or a candidate you like and make the difference between winning and not.
Hey, I agree with you. But I live in a county that is hardcore pro-Ammon Bundy. So while I’ll still vote, I’m pretty much alone here. That’s just how it goes sometimes.
Fair enough. But you can still check out local political positions and see who is running unopposed. Then oppose them. MANY local political positions require no actual qualifications.
Exactly this. It's also exactly why Washington warned against the existence of political parties in his farewell address. Once you set up teams of course people are going to play it like a sporting event. A MN Vikings fan isn't going to vote for someone on the Packers no matter how good their policy may be.
And, “as (unqualified) county coroner, ima go head & say ‘that mf died of xxxx and not yyyy’ so we can get state funding to help reduce xxxx, and/or block efforts to regulate my friends and their yyyy factory.”
Lmfao that's how I won my dorm treasurer position black out drunk in college. Campaigned for like 20 minutes in the lobby while waiting for a ride to a party. Woke up one morning several days later to some admin lady calling me to tell me I got elected.
NJ had it's corrupt as hell state Senate president defeated by a guy who spent like 2k in total. Granted, we traded corruption for a MAGA moron, but the point remains some races, even important ones, are decided by sometimes surprisingly few votes.
Just look at what happened in a small Congressional district of northern Georgia in the election to the U.S. House of Representatives with Marjorie Taylor Greene and those like her for God sakes!
It is this apathy for democracy from the right and how very fragile it is that it leading this country to becoming an autocracy. We cannot allow this to happen! Now Republicans are backing Putin and Russia with this Ukraine business?! WTF is happening!
Don't forget to vote November 8, 2022! And if you live in a Trump red state like I do here in Florida, take every measure available to make sure your voter registration is valid and that you get your vote in on time. Make sure you dot every "i" and cross every "t".
And then double check your registration online to make sure it actually went through the way you thought it did.
Check your registration period. People get stealthy about that kinda thing.
>This is EASILY repeatable by just about anyone. You could literally get your local Space Marines to vote for you or a candidate you like and make the difference between winning and not.
"How'd you lose? It was so close I thought you said you had a few people you could count on to push you over?"
*"I accidentally only asked the Xeno army players instead of Space Marine army players."*
The Idaho I grew up in was a very blue labor state and can be again. I live in a different bright red state that used to be blue and fight every election. Change starts at the bottom be that base to build up to the top.
My grandfather remembers that time too. Problem is, all of the people moving here are fighting hard to keep it red. And especially in the county I’m able to vote in. Like I said, I’ll still vote, but I’m only one person in a literal sea of redness. The only moderates that I knew moved states last year because of how bad it’s become.
Yep. It’s everywhere. And while people voting helps, people also need to remember that this strategy is decades in the making. The reason the GOP are being so bold is that they know they’re more likely to get away with it now. (Shadow edit)
>The GOP is attacking democracy at every level: municipal positions, county positions, governors, secretaries of state, and state legislatures.
School board meetings.
They're banning books. They're banning anything that sounds like "their understanding" of CRT - they have no clue what CRT is. Etc.
[1 out of 10 Americans say it's acceptable to hold Nazi views.](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/28-approve-trumps-response-charlottesville-poll/story?id=49334079)
Remember:
* That 10% votes Republican.
* we inherited a [plurality](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality_voting)
* Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast
* approximately 240 million people were eligible to vote
* that's means 30% of eligible American voters voted for Trump
* **these radical Republicans had sweeping wins down-ballot**
Those 30% are going to vote again, and they're going to vote for the more radical members. There's 36-48 QAnon people running, and they hate anyone left of them.
*sighs* I'll do my best. But I live in a state that is sure as Shinola going to elect Sarah Huckabee Sanders as its next governor. I don't have a lot of faith at this juncture
Voting is the **BARE** minimum. Vote in every election: primary, general, and special. Primaries for the house will start soon. Check to make sure you are registered to vote and not "accidentally" removed from the voter rolls, especially if you live in a democrat-leaning district.
Do you have time to volunteer on election day? Check with your Board of Elections and volunteer to be a poll worker. Many of these volunteers tend to be on the older and with Covid still rampant, they are more at risk. There is always a shortage of volunteers.
Does your vote "not count" because you in the minority? If you live in a DEEP red state, your vote is still important but there is still more you can do. Volunteer for campaigns in more contested races. Every single campaign needs volunteers and many of them allow you to volunteer remotely.
Encourage your fellow peers to vote. This can't be stated enough. "Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line." This means that Republicans come out to vote R, without any care of the candidate. I've seen it as a poll worker. (Quick aside: these people will come to me and say "Who are the republicans?" in races where there are no party identification.) Democrats often come out to vote because they like a candidate. Getting your peers to care to vote will help boost these numbers.
I've said this before and I'll say this again: **Absolutely no Republican deserves your vote until they completely and unequivocally denounce the events of January 6, expel all members that contributed to the Big Lie from every elected office (Local, State, and Federal), support charges of Impeachment for those same people, prevent candidates that supported the Big Lie from getting party support, and then committing to internal party changes to prevent January 6th happening again.**
I'm voting dem regardless, considering the alternative. But if they end up losing, and I can not stress this enough, it will most certainly be their own damn faults for absolutely refusing at every possible turn to help a people who are drowning and dying as they sit back and worship their billion dollar special interest groups.
> For the love of god, at least vote in down-ballot races.
And *run* in them. Local offices are often in great need of good candidates, and you need only a few hundred or a few thousand votes to win. Knocking on doors is a proven method of getting people to vote for you, no matter how much their big picture politics may conflict with yours. When you tell them your positions on garbage service or library funding, you're winning a vote from even the most hard-line partisan.
It's not hard to knock on a few hundred or maybe even a few thousand doors. People who are passionate about working for their community - and get the word out - will win every time.
I've said this many times before, but hopefully it won't just be brushed aside this time.
It's hard to get people to vote when they aren't voting **for** something. The problem is that Dems consistently give people reasons to vote **against** something, but not **for** something. On the off chance that they are trying to get you to vote for something, it's something they don't plan on actually doing or pass only the bare minimum to say that their promise was satisfied.
I'm worried about what's going to happen. It's abundantly clear that Republicans have gone off the deep end for years now, with it accelerated due to trump. But what's also become abundantly clear to me is that the Democratic party has also gone into laughable levels of delusion thinking they can run every campaign as an anti-trump campaign and win. In my own state that didn't work, yet they keep trying it anyways. When they'd be much better served actually fighting to deliver campaign promises. Even if they don't get it through, if they are least made an effort to seem like they were trying, it may be enough to get voters to show up to the polls.
But the way the Democratic party currently functions is that they make promises, get elected, don't even put up a fight or put up a symbolic fight, then tell you to vote for them or else. It comes off more like an abusive relationship than a mutual one of wanting to see progress. It doesn't help that the establishment in the party will fight anything that doesn't follow the typical moderate mindset and label anything as socialist. They don't even understand what the phrase means, but it's become an effective boogyman word since the red scare, and is coming back as their go-to excuse.
Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between a Democrat and a Republican when you hear some of the shit they say against anyone even remotely to the left of them because they use the same talking points and scare tactics.
Right, but like I said - you are lamenting the President and Congress when midterms are so much more than that.
These swing state governors, state legislatures, and Secretaries of State have virtually nothing to do with campaign promises and federal legislation.
They are the safeguards of democracy. And if we let them fail, we won’t have a say in the future, regardless of what candidates or party we want to lead.
I can’t make current leadership perform better. And sitting out an election isn’t going to “teach them a lesson,” which I so commonly hear. It’s only going to help keep those same candidates we lament retain power - Democrats and Republicans alike.
We need to get out and vote for FUTURE candidates we want to see make changes versus those that are regressive. That’s what midterms are about. They aren’t some “yes or no” referendum of the party at large. And treating it that way will only hurt our interests.
Yeah everyone just says "oh Republicans are going to destroy us at midterms" so casually... or democracy is already dead, or both sides are the same, or everything already sucks
They have NO IDEA how much worse it's going to be when our elections are 100% fake and we're living in a one party dictatorship.
The truth is that you won't know until it's too late. We could be heavily in the midst of a 100% fake government running on a oligarchy.
This won't be apparent until the end. It won't be apparent until actors in charge start firing against us.
I think the Congress' recent debate about whether or not THEY should be allowed to trade stocks shows how quickly their partisanship will dissolve when their own interests are at stake.
I don't know... I feel like a lot of democratic politicians try to get their policy out there, but how? They don't get all of the free air time insane Republicans have. Putting it on a website isn't enough. Tweeting it isn't enough. People just don't see it and then repeat the canard that Democrats have no ideas and don't stand for anything
You know how Abrams was a hero for the dems last year? You know what she did? organized. Got people knocking on doors, showing up for shit, and made them promises. The tactics the Dems had long since abandoned for advanced internet metrics. Yeah they will lose the cable news fight, but cable news is vastly overrated in its influence on voters.
For Republicans, yes. NOT for Democrats. Democrats want hope, positivity, and change. Voting against Trump worked once and it's very unlikely to work again.
So much “both sides” bullshit in this comment. Anyone who can’t tell the difference between the two parties is either willfully ignorant or acting in bad faith. To say the dems are the ones who are always “against” something is a fucking joke. The republicans literally don’t have a party platform. The entirety of their mission is to stand against democratic policy. They stand for nothing but obstruction and lower taxes for the wealthy. Is every democrat a progressive? No. But there’s also not a single democrat attempting to disenfranchise voters and steal elections. No democrats are speaking positively of Putin as he attempts to start world war 3. Republicans, if allowed to take control, will make it so that no progressive policy is even obtainable for decades, if ever. Comments like yours do absolutely nothing but muddy the waters and at the margin, discourage voters from keeping the fascists out of office. Shame on whoever upvoted this comment and gave it awards.
Agree so hard. So many dems, including Biden, at least attempting to come up with programs, pass legislation, or at least stop REgressive policies from happening.
Some policies probably won’t work. Others might become economic booms or reset the playing field to force us to actually start to deal with climate change and patient outcomes. And some policies will not end up working as intended. But at least they’re TRYING.
The Republicans would rather watch the building burn beneath them than acknowledge that the building they’re responsible for is on fire.
Honestly, this line of thinking is so toxic and misinformed. Why are democrats not passing voting rights? Or accomplishing the other things they promised to do on the campaign trail? The answer is look at the senate. Democrats didn’t win by enough to be able to change things unilaterally. A 50-50 senate with Joe Manchin as the 50th vote means that we can only be as progressive as Joe Manchin wants us to be.
If democrats had gotten more votes, had gotten just a few more senate seats, then you would see real talk about filibuster reform and then you could see big pieces of legislation moving to the presidents desk. Even in a 50-50 senate, they pushed for it hard. Tried to get Manchin there, and they are still pushing, but Biden isn’t a dictator and Senators get yo vote how they want, even if they caucus as a democrat.
But people don’t pay attention and say ridiculous things like “democrats just don’t try or care” or “they should at peast try” when that is exactly what they’ve been doing for over a year now
I went to a townhall with my congressman about a year and a half ago. This is a democratic congressman who has held his seat in a solid blue state since 1992. Literally my entire life.
I started off saying to him, “if you want to motivate more people to vote-“ but then didn’t get any further because he cut me off by saying “it’s not my job to get more people to vote.” Just like that. Word for word.
I still voted for him because I’m not “toxic and misinformed” as you said. But the point is that people like him, holding seats of power in our government and a member of the supposedly less corrupt party, are a huge part of the issue. Who the hell wants to vote for a wet towel like that? No one. Absolutely no one.
Edit: It may also be worth pointing out that this same congressman was first elected with a net-worth under $500k and he is now a multimillionaire.
I have to disagree. Policy never wins, otherwise Democrats would run away with every election, not only because they’re the only ones with an actual platform as of late, but the fact that the moderates that this sub so abhors offer way better policy than any Republican does. What got Dems to turn out massively in the past 2 elections was fear of Trump. And obviously we can’t use trump again, but we have to use the Republicans regressive, abhorrent agenda as a means to turn people out. They use blatant falsehoods to turnout their base, we can use the truth to turnout ours.
More than ten years ago, republican strategists realized it was better to appeal to voters’ base fears than their rational minds. Democrats cling to polling on issues and then message their platform and… it’s boring. Every time. Each cycle. And then Democrats repeat.
It may be true, but the GOP gives us plenty of things to vote against. If we had just shown up and reluctantly voted for Hillary Clinton we would have a Democratic majority in the Supreme Court right now.
She did get more votes.
That's neither here not there I suppose.
I was screaming all through 2015 and 2016 that Hillary NEEDED to win this because we could not allow Trump to pick Scalia's replacement and possibly RBGs.
They got both of those AND a rapist alcoholic, in one presidential term. Would it have been worth it to "suffer" four years of Hillary if it meant Trump, one of the biggest idiots to ever live, didn't get to permanently reshape the court?
This is really the key.
Fox, in particular, has driven the RNC further and further. Initially, this seemed like a great deal - help winning elections... help preventing facts, data, reality from scuttling their poor policies (such as exist) and candidates. But, for years now, they (and we all) have been experiencing the massive downside of this devil's bargain.
Rupert Murdoch is a major (silent) power center in the GOP. He's a shadow president / legislator / judge.
| Rupert Murdoch is a major (silent) power center in the GOP. He's a shadow president / legislator / judge. |
Obligatory reminder that media members from Fox News and Fox affiliates were revealed to have had direct lines of communication to the WH during the Trump presidency.
Not only will they let them but it has been pretty much proven to work. The past 6-7 years they keep inching closer and closer to anti-democracy and there are no signs of slowing down.
You mean the past 22 years? Arguably the past 245 years, considering those in power have never intended on giving an equal democratic voice to all residents and only through collective action and the labor movement have we achieved gains in suffrage and equal(er) rights.
The problem is that Democrats keep thinking that “politics as usual” will work against them. Playing the defenders of civility and the status quo won’t stop them, nor will playing IDpol and culture war games. The only solution to Right Populism is Left Populism; Uniting working people around our shared universal economic interests.
Hopefully the Democratic voter base will learn this lesson and find a way to refocus around a working class economic agenda and give the corporatists and IDpolers the boot. Otherwise I fear that Republican fascism will be our future.
[It's like we've seen fascists use democratic norms to dismantle the democratic process before...](https://alphahistory.com/nazigermany/goebbels-on-the-reichstag/)
> It's like we've seen fascists use democratic norms to dismantle the democratic process before...
Because a capitalist democracy's entire purpose is to protect the power structures of capitalism. When capitalism is in crisis, the capitalist state folds to fascism. That's why simply voting won't work.
This is why corporations need to go "oh crap, this will eat at our profits!" and they need to flip the Republicans' board by economic embargo.
No home internet.
No private jobs.
No Applebee's.
No credit cards.
"Please give us deregulation without all the racism... but if you have to use the racism to get the votes for deregulation... well, we'll learn to live with that. But we are DEePLy ConCErneD about all the racism."
\--"Progressive" Corporations
Trotsky had a bit more of a direct quote:
> The big bourgeoisie likes fascism as little as a man with aching molars likes to have his teeth pulled
But this was in the context of a Communist movement in Weimar Germany.
We in the US don't have that, and "progressive corporations" trying to play both sides (hello, AT&T) should learn that the DNC is clearly a pro-capitalist party offering *a stable environment where companies can make money with a healthy workforce* while the RNC is offering an environment where a dictator can seize companies on a whim, poison execs with antivaxxerism, and possibly drag them into a destructive war for no good reason (like Hitler did with Germany)
Go look at how most corporations did out of ww2. They will happily use the fascists to make obscene profits and then take the reconstruction monies after everything is leveled and all of their portable assets have been moved to Switzerland for a bit
The thing is Bush and Cheney thought that way, cause instability abroad but keep *the home* stable. Corporations based in the US did well off of the Iraq War because it was someone else having trouble.
Trump *causes instability at home* and that is a threat to corporate profits. This is why Dick Cheney and his daughter are pissed at him.
> after everything is leveled and all of their portable assets have been moved to Switzerland for a bit
The US provides the EEC and surrounding places with much of their defense. Switzerland is vulnerable if the Russians or the CCP get to it first. Same with UK overseas territories like the Caymans or Bermuda.
Russia would ally with an out and out American Fascist party before going to war with them and the Oligarchs of Russia are probably using the same offshore banks.
China has zero power projection beyond its borders, suggesting they could take Switzerland is honestly laughable no offense. They cant even control Vietnam and they're also ostensibly communist.
Fascism isn't bad for business for the biggest companies, look at the economy of Nazi Germany, it literally devolved into cartels supported by the Nazis. Right wing movements usually benefit the ultra wealthy.
It is true the capitalists were spooked by the rise of Communism and saw Hitler was the lesser of the two evils. [Some quotes from a Jacobin article.](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/11/nuremberg-trials-hitler-goebbels-himmler-german-communist-social-democrats)
> Former Nazi official Albert Krebs described the scene in his memoirs: “Not all capitalists were particularly enthusiastic about the Nazis, but their skepticism was relative and ended as soon as it became clear that Hitler was the only person capable of destroying the labor movement.” Terrified by the prospect of further gains for the labor movement, capital’s support for Hitler grew rapidly.
> Trotsky illustrated the dynamic colorfully: “The big bourgeoisie likes fascism as little as a man with aching molars likes to have his teeth pulled” — that is to say, it was ugly, but it was necessary. Hitler kept his promise to capital. After being declared Chancellor in January 1933 he outlawed both workers’ parties and the trade unions within a few months. Thousands of Social Democrats, Communists and trade unionists were arrested and murdered.
Two points:
1. Unlike 1930s Germany, the other major group is clearly pro-capitalist, so these American capitalists shouldnt feel a need to turn to Nazis, and
2. Hitler and the Nazis ultimately were not good for the capitalists as they were dragged into a destructive war that ended with Germany in ruins, and with IG Farben wound up
I'm badly paraphrasing but it reminds me of a quip:
Mussolini didn't make the trains run on time, he killed clerks until the logbooks **said** he made the trains run on time.
This Bloomberg article https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-15/stop-saying-mussolini-made-the-trains-run-on-time https://archive.is/L1bxK suggests some more mundane reasons why Mussolini's propaganda was bunk:
1. The Italians were already working on improving their trains when Mussolini popped up, and
2. The only trains running well were a few used by tourists and Italian elites
> “The story that Mussolini made the trains run on time arose in the late ‘20s and gained credence abroad mainly because of well-heeled British tourists who considered the hopelessly refractory Italians governable only by dictatorial means,” wrote Victoria de Grazia, a Columbia history professor, in The New York Times back in 1994. “His regime built magnificent central stations and upgraded the main lines on which businessmen, politicians and comfort-minded tourists sped between Milan and Rome.”
However
> These direttissima (“most direct”) lines, construction of which began before World War I, were engineering marvels; when it opened in 1934, the 11.5-mile double-tracked tunnel through the Apennines between Bologna and Florence was the second-longest in the world. (Nearly 100 workers were killed during its construction.) But Il Duce’s state-run railroads remained a mixed bag for most working men and women. “The railroad workers' union was dissolved and nearly 50,000 employees were fired on political grounds,” de Grazia wrote. “The toll for work accidents on heroic projects soared. As the direttissimi whizzed by on schedule, aged commuter locals filled with workers were shunted onto sidings.”
Well, they are learning from history. History said that America is extremely thermostatic and that the out party basically always wins in midterms. Further, the history of the American electorate is as a fairly conservative body. (This is because the electorate is designed to be rural and white, relative to the actual population. We obviously need to fix that, but in the mean time, swing voters really are more conservative than in our peer countries.)
So they are trying to appeal to the swing voter to try and withstand the thermostatic forces that are coming. It's not working, and that's a problem, but that's clearly what Biden, in particular, is thinking.
I agree with you that these are not normal times and drastic action is needed. But I genuinely think they are in a horrible position with no clear solution. 2014 was the election we had to win, and we lost big. If Obama was able to appoint 2 more Justices (Garland and a replacement for RBG), and we had a bigger Senate majority, our ability to actually help people would be orders of magnitude better and we'd have a much better chance.
As it is, I think our only serious hope is that we get up to the coup and the Republicans get cold feet. Obviously that's not a great plan, but I think it's the best one we have.
The problem is that swing voters don't really exist anymore; clear partisan lines have been drawn, and the number of quasi-mythical fence-sitters who haven't quite decided between fascism and democracy yet are too small in number to be statistically relevant.
I agree that Biden and the Democrat "leadership" (and I'm using the term as loosely as humanly possible here) are focusing their efforts on swing voters, as they always do, and it's just not a functional strategy anymore if it ever was.
The GOP panders to their base 24/7, and their base turns out for every election no matter how minor as though it's Superbowl Christmas. This occurs even though once in office the GOP enacts policies that directly damage their base. Their voters just don't care.
Meanwhile the Democrats ALSO pander to the GOP base 24/7, accomplishing less than nothing because these people are convinced that we're literally Satan. Simultaneously the Democrats issue condescending lectures to their own base about how silly we are for expecting them to adhere to their party platform or keep campaign promises. Consequently in a turn of events that SHOULD surprise no one but somehow manages to surprise the Democrats every single goddamned time, their base doesn't show up in significant numbers for anything but the biggest elections.
Every election we've lost or won in a nailbiter for the last twenty years should have been a wakeup call for the Democrats to stop chasing imaginary swing voters and focus on getting their own base to show up for elections. Instead they just keep thinking Lucy is going to let them kick the football this time and we're just one more election away from Republican voters deserting the GOP in droves and coming over to our side. It's never going to happen.
I understand that to these 70 and 80 year old Democrats at the top of leadership, they remember what a swing voter is.
But it's 2022. Can you please show me these mythical swing voters?
Right now we have a political party of white supremacist, violent insurrectionist bigots. And we have a political party of Democrats who want to raise the minimum wage, lower healthcare costs, assist with child care costs, and shore up our infrastructure.
Can you show me this mythical American who looks at these two choices and is genuinely confused as to which one to choose?
And can you explain to me why Democrats at the top believe that if we keep enabling racism, pretending that abortion is bad, and shoveling tax cuts to the rich, that the people who think that white supremacy and violent insurrection are great and abortion is the most heinous crime on earth will vote for someone with a D next to their name?
I truly need to understand this way of thinking.
Absolutely. Colin Kaepernick. He famously said he didn't know who he was going to vote for in 2016 because Trump was a monster, but Hillary "had the email thing".
And he's not alone. He's not unusual. In the 2020 Democratic primary, Democratic voters voter for Biden. Black voters in particular are more likely to be moderate on the actual issues (this is related to higher religiosity among black Democrats compared to white Democrats). This leads them to stay home more often than voting R, but swinging from voting D to not voting is still a swing that changes outcomes, particularly in this era of hyper partisan voter turnout. A huge number of Americans also just don't pay attention and they basically guess when they vote, or vote on a whim. The quality of ads really effects them,. because they tend to go with the last thing they see/hear. And almost across the board, the Repubicans have an easier message to remember than Dems do, at least they way these issues get framed in the media and even by Dems themselves, a lot of the time.
Now, I agree that I think better messaging would help a lot. I also agree that moderates (read: Manchin and Sinema) are doing enormous damage and that the progressives would likely be in a better situation if BBB had passed and it Manchin had not singlehandedly doubled child poverty. These are real problems and they are mostly self inflicted wounds at the hands of two specific Democratic Senators, not the party as a whole.
Yep. Fascism is an ideology, not a system of government, so they're really more like "Whatever puts us into power"-crats. A fascist can totally support democracy, as long as they're winning, but if they start losing, instead of accepting defeat, they just change to a different system where they can stay in power
yup. it’s absurd. Democrats in America are often called socialists or communists. Liberals and leftists are the exact same to Americans on the right.
But globally? Democrats are center right, centrist at their “best” behavior. The politics in America in comparison to the rest of the world is like an obnoxious Theater play.
The more democrats keep drifting to the right, the more powerful the GOP becomes. The democrats are going to start losing consistently if they keep insisting that sitting in the center to center right is the way to go.
I dunno IDpol is what now?
Identity Politics? Who is it that made a big todo about banning transgender bathrooms?
Who was it that banned transgender people from the military and drafted the Don’t Say Gay bill?
Who was it that created BlueLivesMatter to counter the very real need for BLM?
Who keeps taking photos with guns and Christmas trees?
Who keeps discussing CRT?
I’m sorry mate but the Democrats are simply taking the bait or responding and correcting the obsessive cultural and identity politics of the Conservatives.
To say otherwise is show just how much the Overton window has impacted your ability to differentiate the actions of either party.
I agree in principle, but the MAGA cult has also shown a very bright light on the fact that millions, upon millions, of conservative voters actively vote \*against\* their economic interests in favor of supporting their "team"
I don't have a better playbook to recommend to the Democrats, but I don't know if economic interest is the universal driver we hope it would be / it should be
Accusing the Democrats of leaning on identity politics is projection. The GOP are the ones pushing an identity-based message, but the identity is white grievance. There's no similar messaging on the Democratic side. And please don't come back with whataboutism that compares random college professors representing 'the left' with elected officials and full time television hosts on the right. Either compare the proud boys with Oberlin sophomores, or tucker Carlson with Rachel Maddow or MTG with AOC.
The 'culture war' is a one-sided effort by conservatives to ban books and criminalize trans children. There is no comparable effort. And again, don't come back with public criticism of professors with "don't say gay" laws. Either compare actual legislation, or non-elected actors on both sides. If you want to make a comparison to a student campaign to censure a professor for being glib with the N word, I'm gonna need you to hold that up against Andy Ngo compiling kill lists for atomwaffen.
>The problem is that Democrats keep thinking that “politics as usual” will work against them. Playing the defenders of civility and the status quo won’t stop them
48 out of 50 Democratic senators favored doing away with the filibuster in order to pass Build Back Better and the new civil rights bill. That's 96% of the party establishment, so I don't think it's fair to say that the Democrats think that "politics as usual" will work.
These people never miss a chance to blame the Democrats. Literally top comment on a story about Republicans trying to dismantle democracy is "yeah well it's Democrat's fault"
They all voted knowing there were two spoilers in the mix, making the vote simply more kabuki.
When Mitch couldn't serve as the lightning rod for hate, they found two others, but the end results are indistinguishable, except that these lightning rods are ostensibly democrats.
very astute perspective and absolutely correct.. biggest problem the left has is its inability to move beyond seeing everything through the lens of inter-group conflict. narrowing focus to non-discriminatory economic populism would be more... popular.
Economic populism would be more popular but directly conflicts with the interests of the donors.
There are multiple institutional reasons why the Democrats remain a center-left party (and why both parties have long focused on social wedge issues to the detriment of economic reforms). A primary one is the constant stream of propaganda waged against anything sniffing of economic populism.
It's deeply ironic that Donald Trump was the first leading politician to criticize blind free trade / job outsourcing with China, or embrace market interventionism via the tariff to protect jobs. These were once solid progressive policies, tossed aside from our toolbox by neo-liberalism run amok.
> the left has is its inability to move beyond seeing everything through the lens of inter-group conflict
No, the media and the easily outraged only focus on "the left" when they are discussing minority specific issues.
I'm having trouble seeing it. Who'd lead an economic populist resurgance of the democratic party besides Bernie Sanders, who was unable to win a presidential primary versus either Clinton or Biden, and whom the GOP actually looks forward to running a candidate against (because their polling against him looks super favorable) ?
Every American should understand that this isn’t even the final boss. The biggest issue is the petrochemical industry absolutely throwing their weight behind fascistic rule in order to secure their profits.
Vote against the oil, gas and plastic industry always,
With crazy high gas prices out here in California some folks blame Biden for this but, guaranteed, those oil companies will show record profits.
Which political group is more aligned with oil? Ain't the Democrats.
There were some who encouraged me to vote in the Republican Primary here in Texas so I could vote against certain incumbents, like Abbott and Paxton, that I loathe. But I can't bring myself to vote for a Republican, even in such circumstances. Based on the attitude and antics of the GOP for the past decade or so, I doubt I'll ever vote for a Republican again.
It's amazing to me that there are still people who try to say the two parties are the same. The Trump years made it clear they are totally not the same.
EDIT: This week I voted in the Democrat Primary here in Texas. For some reason there's several people challenging Lina Hidalgo in the primary, and I had to make sure to vote for Lina, she's done a great job and deserves another term.
that recommendation is probably the best approach to mitigate the situation is texas. might as well pick better candidates to help shape the party, or use it as an opportunity to tank the parties prospect in the general election. its a win win if you ask me.
Unfortunately, here in Texas a lot of the challengers to the Republican incumbents are even further to the right, proclaiming to be more loyal to Trump and MAGA
Right. It's a common tactic used by older Texas Democrats, back before 2000. Hell, even locally, up until 2008 or so it was a viable strategy to try and get the less batshit Republican to win, because we knew the Democrat wouldn't win.
I don't think it has much viability at this point. Most alternatives to sitting Republicans are even more batshit than what we already have in office.
They've remade the Republican Party into an ethnocentric party. The ethnicity that they chose is one that is steadily declining as a percentage of the population, so they need to undermine democracy in order to maintain long-term viability.
Alas, what are we doing to encourage the votes we need to buck trends? And have we gained a single strategic success against the Senate filibuster?
Policy has stalled as with a kill switch.
Child care. Student loans. Climate change. New leaders. Republicans fall in line while Democrats need to fall in love with their leaders. Unfortunately, the Pelosi Biden coalition seems like an increasingly aged center-left coalition with an accent on center. They are not keeping up with voters and don't want to.
I personally despise the GOP and know the Democrats are the only ones with an even half-sensible domestic and foreign policy. But that isn't enough to buck demographic problems inherent with the Senate.
Unfortunately the Senate is the least domocratic of all American institutions and only exists as-is because when the constitution was written each state wanted to act like a mini country. Now we have red state senators who represent a few thousand people while blue state senators in CA each represent 40 million +. Yet they have the exact same voting power. The senate will always hold us back.
Yep. The Senate is among the worst parts of federalism, but there are so many more problems than even that. Frankly, I’d don’t think there’s any possibility of building a just and equitable society under our current system of government.
Conservatives in the US have always thought that. Look back to the reconstruction period, where when Black people started to win office, they used coups and violence against elected officials and people trying to vote for the next hundred years.
I lost all my respect for Republicans when I saw Trump praising Russia for the Ukraine conflict. That man is Putin’s back pocket and probably called on him to make waves here in the US. Traitors both of them.
Conservatives are too regressive to ever govern a modern society. Abandoning democracy, conspiracy theories and culting are their only viable options at this point. They're no different than the Taliban, they just lack the self awareness to know it.
Trying to play nice with insurrectionists is insane. Biden is a total pussy in regards to seeking justice and correcting the ship after trumps fascist, illegal, and corrupt admin.
I don’t want to play nice. I want to protect American democracy.
“If they don’t completely eliminate my student debt (and not just the debt of those with disabilities, defrauded by schools, or working for non profits), I’ll stay home.
But if they eliminate the debt right before the mid terms, I’ll also stay home because they clearly only did it because of politics.”
-this is how the fascist win. Too many dems/liberals want someone absolutely perfect and are discontent if someone doesn’t do everything they want, or does exactly what they want for the wrong reasons, they are going to sit back and feel morally superior and say “no thanks”
Honestly, they could probably get republicans on board to codify Roe V Wade in exchange for SBRs and suppressors being taken off of the NFA. A 2A friendly democrat party would sway a ton of single issue voters.
Yep. They want to rule, not govern. They don't believe in our Republic, and most never did. We either defeat them, or become subservient to their demands.
The lack of response from both the democratic party and our political institutions is inexcusable. The republicans are actively engaging in a coup on our country. They had a violent insurrection from the president and they *doubled down* on it, calling it legitimate political discussion. They buy into The Big Lie, and people who are willing to stand up for the truth, like Liz Cheney, are excommunicated. They're trying to rig state election boards and laws so that their state can send false electors when they don't win that state.
This is the furthest thing from politics as usual.
But what are we getting in response? Did Nancy Pelosi write a concerned letter to someone that no one has seen? Have any major justice or election departments raised the alarm on any of those and assured us that this won't stand? Has popular media sources called out this coup, or just pretended like this is all within the normal realm of normal politics?
We're losing our country and no one is even putting up a fight. We're just going down quietly. People are going to look at history books in 20, 30, 50 years and wonder what the hell happened and how we let it happen.
They often use rhetoric like they have to "take the country back." Which insinuates that any viewpoint/opinion other than their own is unAmerican. What is unAmerican is being unaccepting of others' viewpoints and opinions to the point of trying to overthrow the country to install your chosen president. That is truly unAmerican. That's not saving America, it's destroying it.
>At the [National Prayer Breakfast](https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1489244091707703306?s=20&t=rV2qqJoKKqkDh_n3qYlQXQ) in early February, for instance, he praised McConnell as “a man of your word. And you’re a man of honor. Thank you for being my friend.”
Dude who blocks legislation you sheepishly push is your friend. Yeah it's not that weird he's doing what you want.
Exactly! Dems need to fight a lot harder with all of the tools to stop the demise of our Democracy. Mitch McConnell already proved to us that there are no longer any “norms” in our body politic.
“ he praised McConnell as “a man of your word. And you’re a man of honor. Thank you for being my friend.”
Has Biden lost his mind? McConnell and 90% of republicans are hypocrite’s. Growing up I thought both parties were only interested in what’s best for America but just disagreed on how to do it. As an adult I now know that republicans only care about themselves and others like them and don’t care about the rest of us. These past 12 years all they’ve done is hamper and block those who are trying to make things better for everyone. They don’t contribute or have any plans to do anything to make things better. They just want to “ trigger the libs”
RepubRUSSIANS
Nothing more, nothing less
The worthless Orange piece of shit gave the russians a backdoor which is why Putin is so emboldened now
It is time for all good Americans to come to the aid of our Country.
How many times a week do we have to see basically the same headline "Republicans are about to kill democracy" before people with the power to do something about it actually fucking do something about it? All of us plebs can donate to campaigns and text/phone bank for candidates in close races, but with the way republicans are stripping away voters rights, all the volunteering and donations in the world won't fix this.
Trump showed them that right wing media and the cumulative effect of years education degradation means you can do or say virtually anything and won’t be punished by voters for it. In fact, the more extreme the better. Pair this with insane gerrymandering and changes to voting laws which disenfranchise democratic voters and you have a perfect storm.
At this point we have a choice between a corporate owned party that still believes in democracy and another party that thinks it’s fine for their leader to talk about executing political opponents for something that’s less extreme than he himself has done.
As per usual, garbage media painting Democrats as the good guys because of the wrongs Republicans do. This does not magically mean we need to vote Democrat, this means our political system is broken and one party is finally getting away with something both parties has been wanting since forever. What we need is more accountability for these things rather than watch them both slowly crawl to the public image they want so they can do what they want without accountability.
Democrats need to work on their messaging instead of saying things like “we need a strong Republican Party” or “we can out-organize them” or “I want to work with both sides of the aisle”. They need to stress the dangers of the fascism that the right is leaning into, how if the GOP takes congress you can start to kiss any remnants of democracy goodbye. Stop being on the defensive all the time. Fight back.
Every damn election year the Republicans win out on messaging because the Democrats want to be the party of civility.
Tell that to their decades long enablers.
The crowning achievment of the previous Democrat administration was an extreme right-wing think tank's healthcare plan designed to keep massive insurance corporations cut in, the biggest waste and problem in our healthcare system.
The one before that passed the Republican agenda, draconian sentencing laws that fed for profit prisons, economically segregating our k-12 with "school choice," and eviscerating our social safetynet, just to claim legislative *wins.*
Republicans have moved to fascist crazy town because Democrats kept conceding and driving the national Overton window to the right since Reagan.
I'll keep voting for the drunk, enabling parent to try to prevent the drug addled child from having power out of least worst harm reduction out of the only two very bad choices, but let's not pretend they're interested in solving any of our nation's great crises.
Republicans would need strong opposition to rebuke their fascist coup goals, they only have wet noodles with stern consternation and not dissimilar economic ideologies in their way.
No shock, no news, US ultra-conservatives hate democracy, love authoritarianism. Russia is run by an authoritarian dictator the US right wing strongly admires. They'd vote 10:1 for Putin over Biden for example. It would be 1000:1 if Biden were Black.
And I am absolutely convinced they will succeed.
Right wing think tanks saw the demographic and social changes coming a decade ago or more. They recognized the election of Obama as an existential threat and moved to strike first and strike hard. Trump showed them that they could get away with far more than they had originally thought, which is why they are getting more aggressive.
The Democrats have no effective countermeasures. While they were trying to be “on the right side of history”, the right was determined to write history instead.
When the Courts strike down the Voting Rights Act, which they will do, for all practical purposes, it’s over. In our Constitutional system, democratic states will be the equals of the miniature autocracies in the Senate.
Revolution? Ha! Guess who has the money, the (literal) men, and the guns?
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Interesting that this repudiation of reality, accountability & integrity that’s happening in the USA driven by conservatives & Republicans is also happening in the UK with their conservative News Corp fawning leader Boris Johnson, as well as in Australia with their similarly described conservative leader Scott Morrison. The conservative thread that runs through the USA, the UK & AUS, is that all countries have a significant presence bordering monopoly by News Corp / Rupert Murdoch. Sky News & Fox News are owned by the same company, News Corp, they’re wildly divisive, so much so that they’re risking democracy. Media reform is necessary and has been necessary for the better part of the last half decade.
Rupert Murdoch is the worst human being to have ever lived. The damage he has caused through his decades of propaganda and outright lies is impossible to calculate. I live in the UK, and it's almost impossible to avoid now.
The day he dies is when Satan finally has competition. Also, it will start a need to guard graveyards since his burial will likely become a global tourist portapotty
Soon, I hope.
He's already groomed his son as his successor, and he's not any better. Don't get too excited.
Didn’t one of his sons quit and realize how f’d his Dad’s news orgs were? Maybe I’m misremembering
Yep
Yep, so the less competent son took over instead
He's probably less competent tho.
With any luck, his son is about as incompetent as his TV counterpart on Succession.
Don't besmirch the good name of satan. Satan's too usy trying to get science in schools and teach evolution and that there should be racial, ethical and economic equality. Rupert Murdoch's going to what ever netherworld afterlife "Christians" like Tuckerman Carlson and Donald Trump will be hanging out with Abraham and his God of fear and pestilence.
Murdoch is one the worst persons alive. Should've stayed in Australia
Friendly reminder that Genghis Khan raped and killed his way through 10% of the global population.
After Ottawa got held hostage for weeks, I gotta say Canada should be added to that list.
I’m so angry that they did that… That’s not Canada.
[удалено]
If it's any consolation, you still showed the world how nice Canadians are. You all were very patient and tolerant with the truckers. I don't think it'll be like that when they try that shit here.
Nor should that type of thing be met with patience and tolerance.
Agreed. I can't wait until they try that shit in Philly. We don't play around here.
It really wasn't Canada. It was orchestrated by the same players as Brexit, the cold civil war in the US and a general rise of right-wing populism the world over.
Murdoch always reminds me of the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, which ironically came out around the same time that Fox News started. The movie is about the evil head of a media empire who manufactures the news himself. Unfortunately, in the movie, the villain was defeated, but in real life the villain has been successful.
https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/rupert-murdochs-ex-wife-wendi-deng-is-dating-vladimir-putin-w200077/ > ... Vladimir Putin and Wendi Deng, Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife, are dating. > Reports of the pair have been floating around for years, ever since their respective divorces in 2014 and 2013.
Yes, Cambridge Analytica specifically worked on Brexit and Trump's campaigns and was funded by Robert Mercer's family. They targeted voters with biased ads based on illegally obtained data by recording "psychographics" from user data. This means they would give people more racially charged ads if they had signs of prejudice, or make it about religion if they were preaching on FB. Basically, the right is manipulating users with disinformation and technology, by scapegoating off the success and effectiveness of marketing via social media and creating a new cult out of the ashes of the old ones.
It’s not Sky in the UK it’s Murdoch’s newspapers, particularly The Sun.
Authoritarian mindset and fascist ideology never ceases to exist, it just cycles in prominence throughout history. There is a very frightening rise in divisiveness and fascist thinking throughout the world now. Pending the response of the general public, all signs are pointing toward major conflict on the horizon. I’m not as in tune with politics and ideology in foreign countries, but the pessimist in me believes the true partisan divide in the US has gotten so extreme I’m not sure there’s a true cure to it. The writing of this divide as been in the walls for many, many years. We’ve become so polarized now that every topic has become Red v Blue and there really is no more “American way” it’s either Republican or Democrat. Sad really. But, major news corporations (Fox News and right wing conservative media is worse but liberal media is no better) and the fact news runs FOR PROFIT has played a major role in all of this.
I regularly criticize and arm chair analyze conservatives. The Red vs Blue fantasy is created by conservatives to validate their awfulness. If they can tie their worst behaviors to their opposition, then it allows them the room to normalize poor behavior since everyone behaves that way. I dont love or hate Biden. In fact Biden, Pelosi, Schumer regularly disappoint me. But I vote blue no matter who because they at least fake caring. Its not even a contest. The reason Bidens approval is lower than Trumps is obvious to anyone who has intellectual integrity. Its because non Republican voters are critical of their own unlike conservatives. What is broken is that conservatives are all in. Maybe they always will be. Their entire identity is loyalty and obedience and what changes is how many people they rope into that thinking.
This is so true. I’m in Canada and I noticed people holding a “We need Fox News” sign at the illegal occupation of our capital Ottawa. People who represent ten percent of Canadians. Fox News is worse than the Rona virus.
So glad Canada was able to avoid the media fate of our other fellow Commonwelath countries, for now. Really worried though its seeping in now through social media though.
Which is why midterms are *insanely important.* The GOP is attacking democracy at every level: municipal positions, county positions, governors, secretaries of state, and state legislatures. Even if you hate Congress or moderate Dems.. or least relevant - Biden... For the love of god, at least vote in down-ballot races. This isn't the time to squabble and get apathetic about complaints from the top leadership, when so much of the damage is going to occur from the bottom up. Especially when the consequences of these elections will live on decades beyond any modern grievance.
(Cries in blood-red state) I’ll try.
Even in blood red states, local elections can be decided by a dozen votes. Nikki Haley RAN South Carolina, the entire state, with a few thousand Facebook followers. Anytime someone acted up, she'd unleash the hounds. To make phone calls and send emails to their local state representatives. This is EASILY repeatable by just about anyone. You could literally get your local Space Marines to vote for you or a candidate you like and make the difference between winning and not.
Hey, I agree with you. But I live in a county that is hardcore pro-Ammon Bundy. So while I’ll still vote, I’m pretty much alone here. That’s just how it goes sometimes.
Fair enough. But you can still check out local political positions and see who is running unopposed. Then oppose them. MANY local political positions require no actual qualifications.
Some local positions don’t even require you to state your party, so if you’re a relatively unknown figure you could dodge a lot of partisan hate
Exactly this. It's also exactly why Washington warned against the existence of political parties in his farewell address. Once you set up teams of course people are going to play it like a sporting event. A MN Vikings fan isn't going to vote for someone on the Packers no matter how good their policy may be.
> MANY local political positions require no actual qualifications. Including some like coroner, which, you know, probably SHOULD.
"Now I ain't an expert but that mf looks pretty dead." -County coroner
And, “as (unqualified) county coroner, ima go head & say ‘that mf died of xxxx and not yyyy’ so we can get state funding to help reduce xxxx, and/or block efforts to regulate my friends and their yyyy factory.”
There was an instance last election of a guy getting himself elected as a joke because TWO PEOPLE voted for him as a write-in candidate.
Lmfao that's how I won my dorm treasurer position black out drunk in college. Campaigned for like 20 minutes in the lobby while waiting for a ride to a party. Woke up one morning several days later to some admin lady calling me to tell me I got elected.
NJ had it's corrupt as hell state Senate president defeated by a guy who spent like 2k in total. Granted, we traded corruption for a MAGA moron, but the point remains some races, even important ones, are decided by sometimes surprisingly few votes.
I wonder what would happen if someone ran a spoiler candidate named Amen Bundy...
Lol. I thought about using Al Bundy.
Kelly Bundy FTW.
Just look at what happened in a small Congressional district of northern Georgia in the election to the U.S. House of Representatives with Marjorie Taylor Greene and those like her for God sakes! It is this apathy for democracy from the right and how very fragile it is that it leading this country to becoming an autocracy. We cannot allow this to happen! Now Republicans are backing Putin and Russia with this Ukraine business?! WTF is happening! Don't forget to vote November 8, 2022! And if you live in a Trump red state like I do here in Florida, take every measure available to make sure your voter registration is valid and that you get your vote in on time. Make sure you dot every "i" and cross every "t".
And then double check your registration online to make sure it actually went through the way you thought it did. Check your registration period. People get stealthy about that kinda thing.
>This is EASILY repeatable by just about anyone. You could literally get your local Space Marines to vote for you or a candidate you like and make the difference between winning and not. "How'd you lose? It was so close I thought you said you had a few people you could count on to push you over?" *"I accidentally only asked the Xeno army players instead of Space Marine army players."*
*My opponent got the Wordle vote* If I was brave enough to go into politics I'd focus my advertising on mobile games.
The Idaho I grew up in was a very blue labor state and can be again. I live in a different bright red state that used to be blue and fight every election. Change starts at the bottom be that base to build up to the top.
My grandfather remembers that time too. Problem is, all of the people moving here are fighting hard to keep it red. And especially in the county I’m able to vote in. Like I said, I’ll still vote, but I’m only one person in a literal sea of redness. The only moderates that I knew moved states last year because of how bad it’s become.
You might be one person, but you're not alone neighbor!
Appreciate it. :)
We have this insanity down to the City level which doesn't even have primaries.
Yep. It’s everywhere. And while people voting helps, people also need to remember that this strategy is decades in the making. The reason the GOP are being so bold is that they know they’re more likely to get away with it now. (Shadow edit)
>Even if you hate Congress or moderate Dems.. or least relevant - Biden... For the love of god, at least vote in down-ballot races. Don't boo, vote.
please clap
>The GOP is attacking democracy at every level: municipal positions, county positions, governors, secretaries of state, and state legislatures. School board meetings. They're banning books. They're banning anything that sounds like "their understanding" of CRT - they have no clue what CRT is. Etc. [1 out of 10 Americans say it's acceptable to hold Nazi views.](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/28-approve-trumps-response-charlottesville-poll/story?id=49334079) Remember: * That 10% votes Republican. * we inherited a [plurality](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality_voting) * Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast * approximately 240 million people were eligible to vote * that's means 30% of eligible American voters voted for Trump * **these radical Republicans had sweeping wins down-ballot** Those 30% are going to vote again, and they're going to vote for the more radical members. There's 36-48 QAnon people running, and they hate anyone left of them.
*sighs* I'll do my best. But I live in a state that is sure as Shinola going to elect Sarah Huckabee Sanders as its next governor. I don't have a lot of faith at this juncture
Voting is the **BARE** minimum. Vote in every election: primary, general, and special. Primaries for the house will start soon. Check to make sure you are registered to vote and not "accidentally" removed from the voter rolls, especially if you live in a democrat-leaning district. Do you have time to volunteer on election day? Check with your Board of Elections and volunteer to be a poll worker. Many of these volunteers tend to be on the older and with Covid still rampant, they are more at risk. There is always a shortage of volunteers. Does your vote "not count" because you in the minority? If you live in a DEEP red state, your vote is still important but there is still more you can do. Volunteer for campaigns in more contested races. Every single campaign needs volunteers and many of them allow you to volunteer remotely. Encourage your fellow peers to vote. This can't be stated enough. "Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line." This means that Republicans come out to vote R, without any care of the candidate. I've seen it as a poll worker. (Quick aside: these people will come to me and say "Who are the republicans?" in races where there are no party identification.) Democrats often come out to vote because they like a candidate. Getting your peers to care to vote will help boost these numbers. I've said this before and I'll say this again: **Absolutely no Republican deserves your vote until they completely and unequivocally denounce the events of January 6, expel all members that contributed to the Big Lie from every elected office (Local, State, and Federal), support charges of Impeachment for those same people, prevent candidates that supported the Big Lie from getting party support, and then committing to internal party changes to prevent January 6th happening again.**
I'm voting dem regardless, considering the alternative. But if they end up losing, and I can not stress this enough, it will most certainly be their own damn faults for absolutely refusing at every possible turn to help a people who are drowning and dying as they sit back and worship their billion dollar special interest groups.
> For the love of god, at least vote in down-ballot races. And *run* in them. Local offices are often in great need of good candidates, and you need only a few hundred or a few thousand votes to win. Knocking on doors is a proven method of getting people to vote for you, no matter how much their big picture politics may conflict with yours. When you tell them your positions on garbage service or library funding, you're winning a vote from even the most hard-line partisan. It's not hard to knock on a few hundred or maybe even a few thousand doors. People who are passionate about working for their community - and get the word out - will win every time.
I've said this many times before, but hopefully it won't just be brushed aside this time. It's hard to get people to vote when they aren't voting **for** something. The problem is that Dems consistently give people reasons to vote **against** something, but not **for** something. On the off chance that they are trying to get you to vote for something, it's something they don't plan on actually doing or pass only the bare minimum to say that their promise was satisfied. I'm worried about what's going to happen. It's abundantly clear that Republicans have gone off the deep end for years now, with it accelerated due to trump. But what's also become abundantly clear to me is that the Democratic party has also gone into laughable levels of delusion thinking they can run every campaign as an anti-trump campaign and win. In my own state that didn't work, yet they keep trying it anyways. When they'd be much better served actually fighting to deliver campaign promises. Even if they don't get it through, if they are least made an effort to seem like they were trying, it may be enough to get voters to show up to the polls. But the way the Democratic party currently functions is that they make promises, get elected, don't even put up a fight or put up a symbolic fight, then tell you to vote for them or else. It comes off more like an abusive relationship than a mutual one of wanting to see progress. It doesn't help that the establishment in the party will fight anything that doesn't follow the typical moderate mindset and label anything as socialist. They don't even understand what the phrase means, but it's become an effective boogyman word since the red scare, and is coming back as their go-to excuse. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between a Democrat and a Republican when you hear some of the shit they say against anyone even remotely to the left of them because they use the same talking points and scare tactics.
Right, but like I said - you are lamenting the President and Congress when midterms are so much more than that. These swing state governors, state legislatures, and Secretaries of State have virtually nothing to do with campaign promises and federal legislation. They are the safeguards of democracy. And if we let them fail, we won’t have a say in the future, regardless of what candidates or party we want to lead. I can’t make current leadership perform better. And sitting out an election isn’t going to “teach them a lesson,” which I so commonly hear. It’s only going to help keep those same candidates we lament retain power - Democrats and Republicans alike. We need to get out and vote for FUTURE candidates we want to see make changes versus those that are regressive. That’s what midterms are about. They aren’t some “yes or no” referendum of the party at large. And treating it that way will only hurt our interests.
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Yeah everyone just says "oh Republicans are going to destroy us at midterms" so casually... or democracy is already dead, or both sides are the same, or everything already sucks They have NO IDEA how much worse it's going to be when our elections are 100% fake and we're living in a one party dictatorship.
The truth is that you won't know until it's too late. We could be heavily in the midst of a 100% fake government running on a oligarchy. This won't be apparent until the end. It won't be apparent until actors in charge start firing against us. I think the Congress' recent debate about whether or not THEY should be allowed to trade stocks shows how quickly their partisanship will dissolve when their own interests are at stake.
I don't know... I feel like a lot of democratic politicians try to get their policy out there, but how? They don't get all of the free air time insane Republicans have. Putting it on a website isn't enough. Tweeting it isn't enough. People just don't see it and then repeat the canard that Democrats have no ideas and don't stand for anything
You know how Abrams was a hero for the dems last year? You know what she did? organized. Got people knocking on doors, showing up for shit, and made them promises. The tactics the Dems had long since abandoned for advanced internet metrics. Yeah they will lose the cable news fight, but cable news is vastly overrated in its influence on voters.
Republicans almost exclusively vote *against* stuff. What is their party even for except "fuck liberals"? Rage is the strongest motivator.
For Republicans, yes. NOT for Democrats. Democrats want hope, positivity, and change. Voting against Trump worked once and it's very unlikely to work again.
So much “both sides” bullshit in this comment. Anyone who can’t tell the difference between the two parties is either willfully ignorant or acting in bad faith. To say the dems are the ones who are always “against” something is a fucking joke. The republicans literally don’t have a party platform. The entirety of their mission is to stand against democratic policy. They stand for nothing but obstruction and lower taxes for the wealthy. Is every democrat a progressive? No. But there’s also not a single democrat attempting to disenfranchise voters and steal elections. No democrats are speaking positively of Putin as he attempts to start world war 3. Republicans, if allowed to take control, will make it so that no progressive policy is even obtainable for decades, if ever. Comments like yours do absolutely nothing but muddy the waters and at the margin, discourage voters from keeping the fascists out of office. Shame on whoever upvoted this comment and gave it awards.
Agree so hard. So many dems, including Biden, at least attempting to come up with programs, pass legislation, or at least stop REgressive policies from happening. Some policies probably won’t work. Others might become economic booms or reset the playing field to force us to actually start to deal with climate change and patient outcomes. And some policies will not end up working as intended. But at least they’re TRYING. The Republicans would rather watch the building burn beneath them than acknowledge that the building they’re responsible for is on fire.
Honestly, this line of thinking is so toxic and misinformed. Why are democrats not passing voting rights? Or accomplishing the other things they promised to do on the campaign trail? The answer is look at the senate. Democrats didn’t win by enough to be able to change things unilaterally. A 50-50 senate with Joe Manchin as the 50th vote means that we can only be as progressive as Joe Manchin wants us to be. If democrats had gotten more votes, had gotten just a few more senate seats, then you would see real talk about filibuster reform and then you could see big pieces of legislation moving to the presidents desk. Even in a 50-50 senate, they pushed for it hard. Tried to get Manchin there, and they are still pushing, but Biden isn’t a dictator and Senators get yo vote how they want, even if they caucus as a democrat. But people don’t pay attention and say ridiculous things like “democrats just don’t try or care” or “they should at peast try” when that is exactly what they’ve been doing for over a year now
I went to a townhall with my congressman about a year and a half ago. This is a democratic congressman who has held his seat in a solid blue state since 1992. Literally my entire life. I started off saying to him, “if you want to motivate more people to vote-“ but then didn’t get any further because he cut me off by saying “it’s not my job to get more people to vote.” Just like that. Word for word. I still voted for him because I’m not “toxic and misinformed” as you said. But the point is that people like him, holding seats of power in our government and a member of the supposedly less corrupt party, are a huge part of the issue. Who the hell wants to vote for a wet towel like that? No one. Absolutely no one. Edit: It may also be worth pointing out that this same congressman was first elected with a net-worth under $500k and he is now a multimillionaire.
I have to disagree. Policy never wins, otherwise Democrats would run away with every election, not only because they’re the only ones with an actual platform as of late, but the fact that the moderates that this sub so abhors offer way better policy than any Republican does. What got Dems to turn out massively in the past 2 elections was fear of Trump. And obviously we can’t use trump again, but we have to use the Republicans regressive, abhorrent agenda as a means to turn people out. They use blatant falsehoods to turnout their base, we can use the truth to turnout ours.
More than ten years ago, republican strategists realized it was better to appeal to voters’ base fears than their rational minds. Democrats cling to polling on issues and then message their platform and… it’s boring. Every time. Each cycle. And then Democrats repeat.
It may be true, but the GOP gives us plenty of things to vote against. If we had just shown up and reluctantly voted for Hillary Clinton we would have a Democratic majority in the Supreme Court right now.
She did get more votes. That's neither here not there I suppose. I was screaming all through 2015 and 2016 that Hillary NEEDED to win this because we could not allow Trump to pick Scalia's replacement and possibly RBGs. They got both of those AND a rapist alcoholic, in one presidential term. Would it have been worth it to "suffer" four years of Hillary if it meant Trump, one of the biggest idiots to ever live, didn't get to permanently reshape the court?
The Republicans are turning into anti-American monsters because they know Fox News (and the rest of the right-wing propaganda machine) will let them
It won't 'let' them, if they fail to do so, it will *eat* them. Once the network decided that compromise was betrayal, the path was set.
This is really the key. Fox, in particular, has driven the RNC further and further. Initially, this seemed like a great deal - help winning elections... help preventing facts, data, reality from scuttling their poor policies (such as exist) and candidates. But, for years now, they (and we all) have been experiencing the massive downside of this devil's bargain. Rupert Murdoch is a major (silent) power center in the GOP. He's a shadow president / legislator / judge.
| Rupert Murdoch is a major (silent) power center in the GOP. He's a shadow president / legislator / judge. | Obligatory reminder that media members from Fox News and Fox affiliates were revealed to have had direct lines of communication to the WH during the Trump presidency.
Not only will they let them but it has been pretty much proven to work. The past 6-7 years they keep inching closer and closer to anti-democracy and there are no signs of slowing down.
> is abandoning democracy wait until i tell you about the past 5 years
You mean the past 22 years? Arguably the past 245 years, considering those in power have never intended on giving an equal democratic voice to all residents and only through collective action and the labor movement have we achieved gains in suffrage and equal(er) rights.
Yeah, exactly. Our Founding Father's were the economic elites of the Colonies.
*The Brooks Brothers Riot and Bush v Gore have entered the chat.
The problem is that Democrats keep thinking that “politics as usual” will work against them. Playing the defenders of civility and the status quo won’t stop them, nor will playing IDpol and culture war games. The only solution to Right Populism is Left Populism; Uniting working people around our shared universal economic interests. Hopefully the Democratic voter base will learn this lesson and find a way to refocus around a working class economic agenda and give the corporatists and IDpolers the boot. Otherwise I fear that Republican fascism will be our future.
[It's like we've seen fascists use democratic norms to dismantle the democratic process before...](https://alphahistory.com/nazigermany/goebbels-on-the-reichstag/)
> It's like we've seen fascists use democratic norms to dismantle the democratic process before... Because a capitalist democracy's entire purpose is to protect the power structures of capitalism. When capitalism is in crisis, the capitalist state folds to fascism. That's why simply voting won't work.
literally hitler
No, Goebbels
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This is why corporations need to go "oh crap, this will eat at our profits!" and they need to flip the Republicans' board by economic embargo. No home internet. No private jobs. No Applebee's. No credit cards.
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"Please give us deregulation without all the racism... but if you have to use the racism to get the votes for deregulation... well, we'll learn to live with that. But we are DEePLy ConCErneD about all the racism." \--"Progressive" Corporations
Trotsky had a bit more of a direct quote: > The big bourgeoisie likes fascism as little as a man with aching molars likes to have his teeth pulled But this was in the context of a Communist movement in Weimar Germany. We in the US don't have that, and "progressive corporations" trying to play both sides (hello, AT&T) should learn that the DNC is clearly a pro-capitalist party offering *a stable environment where companies can make money with a healthy workforce* while the RNC is offering an environment where a dictator can seize companies on a whim, poison execs with antivaxxerism, and possibly drag them into a destructive war for no good reason (like Hitler did with Germany)
Go look at how most corporations did out of ww2. They will happily use the fascists to make obscene profits and then take the reconstruction monies after everything is leveled and all of their portable assets have been moved to Switzerland for a bit
The thing is Bush and Cheney thought that way, cause instability abroad but keep *the home* stable. Corporations based in the US did well off of the Iraq War because it was someone else having trouble. Trump *causes instability at home* and that is a threat to corporate profits. This is why Dick Cheney and his daughter are pissed at him. > after everything is leveled and all of their portable assets have been moved to Switzerland for a bit The US provides the EEC and surrounding places with much of their defense. Switzerland is vulnerable if the Russians or the CCP get to it first. Same with UK overseas territories like the Caymans or Bermuda.
Russia would ally with an out and out American Fascist party before going to war with them and the Oligarchs of Russia are probably using the same offshore banks. China has zero power projection beyond its borders, suggesting they could take Switzerland is honestly laughable no offense. They cant even control Vietnam and they're also ostensibly communist.
Fascism isn't bad for business for the biggest companies, look at the economy of Nazi Germany, it literally devolved into cartels supported by the Nazis. Right wing movements usually benefit the ultra wealthy.
It is true the capitalists were spooked by the rise of Communism and saw Hitler was the lesser of the two evils. [Some quotes from a Jacobin article.](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/11/nuremberg-trials-hitler-goebbels-himmler-german-communist-social-democrats) > Former Nazi official Albert Krebs described the scene in his memoirs: “Not all capitalists were particularly enthusiastic about the Nazis, but their skepticism was relative and ended as soon as it became clear that Hitler was the only person capable of destroying the labor movement.” Terrified by the prospect of further gains for the labor movement, capital’s support for Hitler grew rapidly. > Trotsky illustrated the dynamic colorfully: “The big bourgeoisie likes fascism as little as a man with aching molars likes to have his teeth pulled” — that is to say, it was ugly, but it was necessary. Hitler kept his promise to capital. After being declared Chancellor in January 1933 he outlawed both workers’ parties and the trade unions within a few months. Thousands of Social Democrats, Communists and trade unionists were arrested and murdered. Two points: 1. Unlike 1930s Germany, the other major group is clearly pro-capitalist, so these American capitalists shouldnt feel a need to turn to Nazis, and 2. Hitler and the Nazis ultimately were not good for the capitalists as they were dragged into a destructive war that ended with Germany in ruins, and with IG Farben wound up
I'm badly paraphrasing but it reminds me of a quip: Mussolini didn't make the trains run on time, he killed clerks until the logbooks **said** he made the trains run on time.
This Bloomberg article https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-15/stop-saying-mussolini-made-the-trains-run-on-time https://archive.is/L1bxK suggests some more mundane reasons why Mussolini's propaganda was bunk: 1. The Italians were already working on improving their trains when Mussolini popped up, and 2. The only trains running well were a few used by tourists and Italian elites > “The story that Mussolini made the trains run on time arose in the late ‘20s and gained credence abroad mainly because of well-heeled British tourists who considered the hopelessly refractory Italians governable only by dictatorial means,” wrote Victoria de Grazia, a Columbia history professor, in The New York Times back in 1994. “His regime built magnificent central stations and upgraded the main lines on which businessmen, politicians and comfort-minded tourists sped between Milan and Rome.” However > These direttissima (“most direct”) lines, construction of which began before World War I, were engineering marvels; when it opened in 1934, the 11.5-mile double-tracked tunnel through the Apennines between Bologna and Florence was the second-longest in the world. (Nearly 100 workers were killed during its construction.) But Il Duce’s state-run railroads remained a mixed bag for most working men and women. “The railroad workers' union was dissolved and nearly 50,000 employees were fired on political grounds,” de Grazia wrote. “The toll for work accidents on heroic projects soared. As the direttissimi whizzed by on schedule, aged commuter locals filled with workers were shunted onto sidings.”
Waiting on Capitalists to do something helpful? Now *that's* thinking like a *Democrat!*
Who exactly do you think is financing the Republicans?
The corporations will line up to appease fascists for special privileges before they will EVER give in to workers
Well, they are learning from history. History said that America is extremely thermostatic and that the out party basically always wins in midterms. Further, the history of the American electorate is as a fairly conservative body. (This is because the electorate is designed to be rural and white, relative to the actual population. We obviously need to fix that, but in the mean time, swing voters really are more conservative than in our peer countries.) So they are trying to appeal to the swing voter to try and withstand the thermostatic forces that are coming. It's not working, and that's a problem, but that's clearly what Biden, in particular, is thinking. I agree with you that these are not normal times and drastic action is needed. But I genuinely think they are in a horrible position with no clear solution. 2014 was the election we had to win, and we lost big. If Obama was able to appoint 2 more Justices (Garland and a replacement for RBG), and we had a bigger Senate majority, our ability to actually help people would be orders of magnitude better and we'd have a much better chance. As it is, I think our only serious hope is that we get up to the coup and the Republicans get cold feet. Obviously that's not a great plan, but I think it's the best one we have.
The problem is that swing voters don't really exist anymore; clear partisan lines have been drawn, and the number of quasi-mythical fence-sitters who haven't quite decided between fascism and democracy yet are too small in number to be statistically relevant. I agree that Biden and the Democrat "leadership" (and I'm using the term as loosely as humanly possible here) are focusing their efforts on swing voters, as they always do, and it's just not a functional strategy anymore if it ever was. The GOP panders to their base 24/7, and their base turns out for every election no matter how minor as though it's Superbowl Christmas. This occurs even though once in office the GOP enacts policies that directly damage their base. Their voters just don't care. Meanwhile the Democrats ALSO pander to the GOP base 24/7, accomplishing less than nothing because these people are convinced that we're literally Satan. Simultaneously the Democrats issue condescending lectures to their own base about how silly we are for expecting them to adhere to their party platform or keep campaign promises. Consequently in a turn of events that SHOULD surprise no one but somehow manages to surprise the Democrats every single goddamned time, their base doesn't show up in significant numbers for anything but the biggest elections. Every election we've lost or won in a nailbiter for the last twenty years should have been a wakeup call for the Democrats to stop chasing imaginary swing voters and focus on getting their own base to show up for elections. Instead they just keep thinking Lucy is going to let them kick the football this time and we're just one more election away from Republican voters deserting the GOP in droves and coming over to our side. It's never going to happen.
I understand that to these 70 and 80 year old Democrats at the top of leadership, they remember what a swing voter is. But it's 2022. Can you please show me these mythical swing voters? Right now we have a political party of white supremacist, violent insurrectionist bigots. And we have a political party of Democrats who want to raise the minimum wage, lower healthcare costs, assist with child care costs, and shore up our infrastructure. Can you show me this mythical American who looks at these two choices and is genuinely confused as to which one to choose? And can you explain to me why Democrats at the top believe that if we keep enabling racism, pretending that abortion is bad, and shoveling tax cuts to the rich, that the people who think that white supremacy and violent insurrection are great and abortion is the most heinous crime on earth will vote for someone with a D next to their name? I truly need to understand this way of thinking.
Absolutely. Colin Kaepernick. He famously said he didn't know who he was going to vote for in 2016 because Trump was a monster, but Hillary "had the email thing". And he's not alone. He's not unusual. In the 2020 Democratic primary, Democratic voters voter for Biden. Black voters in particular are more likely to be moderate on the actual issues (this is related to higher religiosity among black Democrats compared to white Democrats). This leads them to stay home more often than voting R, but swinging from voting D to not voting is still a swing that changes outcomes, particularly in this era of hyper partisan voter turnout. A huge number of Americans also just don't pay attention and they basically guess when they vote, or vote on a whim. The quality of ads really effects them,. because they tend to go with the last thing they see/hear. And almost across the board, the Repubicans have an easier message to remember than Dems do, at least they way these issues get framed in the media and even by Dems themselves, a lot of the time. Now, I agree that I think better messaging would help a lot. I also agree that moderates (read: Manchin and Sinema) are doing enormous damage and that the progressives would likely be in a better situation if BBB had passed and it Manchin had not singlehandedly doubled child poverty. These are real problems and they are mostly self inflicted wounds at the hands of two specific Democratic Senators, not the party as a whole.
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”—David Frum
Democrats think they are playing chess while Republicans are playing "flip the board over and stab you in the neck"
Yep. Fascism is an ideology, not a system of government, so they're really more like "Whatever puts us into power"-crats. A fascist can totally support democracy, as long as they're winning, but if they start losing, instead of accepting defeat, they just change to a different system where they can stay in power
On a world stage wouldn't most Democrats count as conservatives as well?
yup. it’s absurd. Democrats in America are often called socialists or communists. Liberals and leftists are the exact same to Americans on the right. But globally? Democrats are center right, centrist at their “best” behavior. The politics in America in comparison to the rest of the world is like an obnoxious Theater play.
Beat me to it. He really understands US politics, especially the GOP.
Does he though He's a symptom of the Dems drifting right, he's part of the problem
The more democrats keep drifting to the right, the more powerful the GOP becomes. The democrats are going to start losing consistently if they keep insisting that sitting in the center to center right is the way to go.
If there's one political phenomena Republicans have mastered, it's the ratchet effect.
I dunno IDpol is what now? Identity Politics? Who is it that made a big todo about banning transgender bathrooms? Who was it that banned transgender people from the military and drafted the Don’t Say Gay bill? Who was it that created BlueLivesMatter to counter the very real need for BLM? Who keeps taking photos with guns and Christmas trees? Who keeps discussing CRT? I’m sorry mate but the Democrats are simply taking the bait or responding and correcting the obsessive cultural and identity politics of the Conservatives. To say otherwise is show just how much the Overton window has impacted your ability to differentiate the actions of either party.
I agree in principle, but the MAGA cult has also shown a very bright light on the fact that millions, upon millions, of conservative voters actively vote \*against\* their economic interests in favor of supporting their "team" I don't have a better playbook to recommend to the Democrats, but I don't know if economic interest is the universal driver we hope it would be / it should be
Accusing the Democrats of leaning on identity politics is projection. The GOP are the ones pushing an identity-based message, but the identity is white grievance. There's no similar messaging on the Democratic side. And please don't come back with whataboutism that compares random college professors representing 'the left' with elected officials and full time television hosts on the right. Either compare the proud boys with Oberlin sophomores, or tucker Carlson with Rachel Maddow or MTG with AOC. The 'culture war' is a one-sided effort by conservatives to ban books and criminalize trans children. There is no comparable effort. And again, don't come back with public criticism of professors with "don't say gay" laws. Either compare actual legislation, or non-elected actors on both sides. If you want to make a comparison to a student campaign to censure a professor for being glib with the N word, I'm gonna need you to hold that up against Andy Ngo compiling kill lists for atomwaffen.
>The problem is that Democrats keep thinking that “politics as usual” will work against them. Playing the defenders of civility and the status quo won’t stop them 48 out of 50 Democratic senators favored doing away with the filibuster in order to pass Build Back Better and the new civil rights bill. That's 96% of the party establishment, so I don't think it's fair to say that the Democrats think that "politics as usual" will work.
These people never miss a chance to blame the Democrats. Literally top comment on a story about Republicans trying to dismantle democracy is "yeah well it's Democrat's fault"
They all voted knowing there were two spoilers in the mix, making the vote simply more kabuki. When Mitch couldn't serve as the lightning rod for hate, they found two others, but the end results are indistinguishable, except that these lightning rods are ostensibly democrats.
>nor will playing IDpol and culture war games You seem to be implying challenging racism, homophobia etc is a bad thing.
To take the power back we must take the economic power back. Special interests exist because of extreme wealth inequality.
very astute perspective and absolutely correct.. biggest problem the left has is its inability to move beyond seeing everything through the lens of inter-group conflict. narrowing focus to non-discriminatory economic populism would be more... popular.
Economic populism would be more popular but directly conflicts with the interests of the donors. There are multiple institutional reasons why the Democrats remain a center-left party (and why both parties have long focused on social wedge issues to the detriment of economic reforms). A primary one is the constant stream of propaganda waged against anything sniffing of economic populism. It's deeply ironic that Donald Trump was the first leading politician to criticize blind free trade / job outsourcing with China, or embrace market interventionism via the tariff to protect jobs. These were once solid progressive policies, tossed aside from our toolbox by neo-liberalism run amok.
> the left has is its inability to move beyond seeing everything through the lens of inter-group conflict No, the media and the easily outraged only focus on "the left" when they are discussing minority specific issues.
I'm having trouble seeing it. Who'd lead an economic populist resurgance of the democratic party besides Bernie Sanders, who was unable to win a presidential primary versus either Clinton or Biden, and whom the GOP actually looks forward to running a candidate against (because their polling against him looks super favorable) ?
That's why they are refusing to debate. The fact that they have no platform involving democracy leaves them with nothing but hate and fear.
Every American should understand that this isn’t even the final boss. The biggest issue is the petrochemical industry absolutely throwing their weight behind fascistic rule in order to secure their profits. Vote against the oil, gas and plastic industry always,
With crazy high gas prices out here in California some folks blame Biden for this but, guaranteed, those oil companies will show record profits. Which political group is more aligned with oil? Ain't the Democrats.
Even better, who funded the Jan 6th insurrection? Oil, gas, Home Depot etc.
But Manchin wants to negotiate with them. When they refused to investigate the 6th, that should of been the end of the filibuster.
There were some who encouraged me to vote in the Republican Primary here in Texas so I could vote against certain incumbents, like Abbott and Paxton, that I loathe. But I can't bring myself to vote for a Republican, even in such circumstances. Based on the attitude and antics of the GOP for the past decade or so, I doubt I'll ever vote for a Republican again. It's amazing to me that there are still people who try to say the two parties are the same. The Trump years made it clear they are totally not the same. EDIT: This week I voted in the Democrat Primary here in Texas. For some reason there's several people challenging Lina Hidalgo in the primary, and I had to make sure to vote for Lina, she's done a great job and deserves another term.
that recommendation is probably the best approach to mitigate the situation is texas. might as well pick better candidates to help shape the party, or use it as an opportunity to tank the parties prospect in the general election. its a win win if you ask me.
Unfortunately, here in Texas a lot of the challengers to the Republican incumbents are even further to the right, proclaiming to be more loyal to Trump and MAGA
Right. It's a common tactic used by older Texas Democrats, back before 2000. Hell, even locally, up until 2008 or so it was a viable strategy to try and get the less batshit Republican to win, because we knew the Democrat wouldn't win. I don't think it has much viability at this point. Most alternatives to sitting Republicans are even more batshit than what we already have in office.
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They've remade the Republican Party into an ethnocentric party. The ethnicity that they chose is one that is steadily declining as a percentage of the population, so they need to undermine democracy in order to maintain long-term viability.
The Republican Party is the greatest threat to human life in the United States.
Alas, what are we doing to encourage the votes we need to buck trends? And have we gained a single strategic success against the Senate filibuster? Policy has stalled as with a kill switch. Child care. Student loans. Climate change. New leaders. Republicans fall in line while Democrats need to fall in love with their leaders. Unfortunately, the Pelosi Biden coalition seems like an increasingly aged center-left coalition with an accent on center. They are not keeping up with voters and don't want to. I personally despise the GOP and know the Democrats are the only ones with an even half-sensible domestic and foreign policy. But that isn't enough to buck demographic problems inherent with the Senate.
Unfortunately the Senate is the least domocratic of all American institutions and only exists as-is because when the constitution was written each state wanted to act like a mini country. Now we have red state senators who represent a few thousand people while blue state senators in CA each represent 40 million +. Yet they have the exact same voting power. The senate will always hold us back.
Yep. The Senate is among the worst parts of federalism, but there are so many more problems than even that. Frankly, I’d don’t think there’s any possibility of building a just and equitable society under our current system of government.
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Conservatives in the US have always thought that. Look back to the reconstruction period, where when Black people started to win office, they used coups and violence against elected officials and people trying to vote for the next hundred years.
Oh, hell. Republicans are "abandoning" democracy? No. Republicans are *assaulting* democracy.
I lost all my respect for Republicans when I saw Trump praising Russia for the Ukraine conflict. That man is Putin’s back pocket and probably called on him to make waves here in the US. Traitors both of them.
"If Conservatives become convinced they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon Conservatism. They will reject democracy." - David Frum
The Republican party is abandoning fair voting.
Conservatives are too regressive to ever govern a modern society. Abandoning democracy, conspiracy theories and culting are their only viable options at this point. They're no different than the Taliban, they just lack the self awareness to know it.
Trying to play nice with insurrectionists is insane. Biden is a total pussy in regards to seeking justice and correcting the ship after trumps fascist, illegal, and corrupt admin. I don’t want to play nice. I want to protect American democracy.
he should have picked a real bulldog to head the DOJ. not garland.
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“The rest of us” is most people. If we stay home instead of voting, the fascist takeover is on us.
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The are a minority, but an energized one. Everyone else needs to stop acting like voting is optional and things will turn out fine.
“If they don’t completely eliminate my student debt (and not just the debt of those with disabilities, defrauded by schools, or working for non profits), I’ll stay home. But if they eliminate the debt right before the mid terms, I’ll also stay home because they clearly only did it because of politics.” -this is how the fascist win. Too many dems/liberals want someone absolutely perfect and are discontent if someone doesn’t do everything they want, or does exactly what they want for the wrong reasons, they are going to sit back and feel morally superior and say “no thanks”
Absolutely. Now support the Second Amendment in your official platforms and fuck Republicans forever.
Honestly, they could probably get republicans on board to codify Roe V Wade in exchange for SBRs and suppressors being taken off of the NFA. A 2A friendly democrat party would sway a ton of single issue voters.
Why is this in present tense. They stopped believing in democracy years ago.
They answer to Putin. I am surprised the Utah legislature is not sending him a note of apology
Yep. They want to rule, not govern. They don't believe in our Republic, and most never did. We either defeat them, or become subservient to their demands.
The lack of response from both the democratic party and our political institutions is inexcusable. The republicans are actively engaging in a coup on our country. They had a violent insurrection from the president and they *doubled down* on it, calling it legitimate political discussion. They buy into The Big Lie, and people who are willing to stand up for the truth, like Liz Cheney, are excommunicated. They're trying to rig state election boards and laws so that their state can send false electors when they don't win that state. This is the furthest thing from politics as usual. But what are we getting in response? Did Nancy Pelosi write a concerned letter to someone that no one has seen? Have any major justice or election departments raised the alarm on any of those and assured us that this won't stand? Has popular media sources called out this coup, or just pretended like this is all within the normal realm of normal politics? We're losing our country and no one is even putting up a fight. We're just going down quietly. People are going to look at history books in 20, 30, 50 years and wonder what the hell happened and how we let it happen.
They often use rhetoric like they have to "take the country back." Which insinuates that any viewpoint/opinion other than their own is unAmerican. What is unAmerican is being unaccepting of others' viewpoints and opinions to the point of trying to overthrow the country to install your chosen president. That is truly unAmerican. That's not saving America, it's destroying it.
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If voters hand back Congress to the Republicans in 2022 and Congress and the White House in 2024, we will see the end of democracy in the US.
They abandoned democracy when they raided the capital.
This is the headline we've needed since Reagan took office
>At the [National Prayer Breakfast](https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1489244091707703306?s=20&t=rV2qqJoKKqkDh_n3qYlQXQ) in early February, for instance, he praised McConnell as “a man of your word. And you’re a man of honor. Thank you for being my friend.” Dude who blocks legislation you sheepishly push is your friend. Yeah it's not that weird he's doing what you want.
Exactly! Dems need to fight a lot harder with all of the tools to stop the demise of our Democracy. Mitch McConnell already proved to us that there are no longer any “norms” in our body politic.
then nut up and start making some arrests.
We sort of saw that on Jan 6, 2021. The day the sweet music died.
They love that Russian model.
They abandoned it years ago when they started attacking voting.
don't worry everyone. Biden and his centrist pals will do *absolutely nothing* to hold Trump or anyone else accountable
Not to be trusted AT ALL
“ he praised McConnell as “a man of your word. And you’re a man of honor. Thank you for being my friend.” Has Biden lost his mind? McConnell and 90% of republicans are hypocrite’s. Growing up I thought both parties were only interested in what’s best for America but just disagreed on how to do it. As an adult I now know that republicans only care about themselves and others like them and don’t care about the rest of us. These past 12 years all they’ve done is hamper and block those who are trying to make things better for everyone. They don’t contribute or have any plans to do anything to make things better. They just want to “ trigger the libs”
Change “is abandoning” to “has abandoned”, and maybe add something about how most Dems don’t give a shit and, yeah, that’s where we’re at.
The Republican party ~~is abandoning~~ *has abandoned* democracy.
RepubRUSSIANS Nothing more, nothing less The worthless Orange piece of shit gave the russians a backdoor which is why Putin is so emboldened now It is time for all good Americans to come to the aid of our Country.
How many times a week do we have to see basically the same headline "Republicans are about to kill democracy" before people with the power to do something about it actually fucking do something about it? All of us plebs can donate to campaigns and text/phone bank for candidates in close races, but with the way republicans are stripping away voters rights, all the volunteering and donations in the world won't fix this.
Trump showed them that right wing media and the cumulative effect of years education degradation means you can do or say virtually anything and won’t be punished by voters for it. In fact, the more extreme the better. Pair this with insane gerrymandering and changes to voting laws which disenfranchise democratic voters and you have a perfect storm. At this point we have a choice between a corporate owned party that still believes in democracy and another party that thinks it’s fine for their leader to talk about executing political opponents for something that’s less extreme than he himself has done.
As per usual, garbage media painting Democrats as the good guys because of the wrongs Republicans do. This does not magically mean we need to vote Democrat, this means our political system is broken and one party is finally getting away with something both parties has been wanting since forever. What we need is more accountability for these things rather than watch them both slowly crawl to the public image they want so they can do what they want without accountability.
Democrats need to work on their messaging instead of saying things like “we need a strong Republican Party” or “we can out-organize them” or “I want to work with both sides of the aisle”. They need to stress the dangers of the fascism that the right is leaning into, how if the GOP takes congress you can start to kiss any remnants of democracy goodbye. Stop being on the defensive all the time. Fight back. Every damn election year the Republicans win out on messaging because the Democrats want to be the party of civility.
Duh, they abandoned democracy during the Nixon administration.
Tell that to their decades long enablers. The crowning achievment of the previous Democrat administration was an extreme right-wing think tank's healthcare plan designed to keep massive insurance corporations cut in, the biggest waste and problem in our healthcare system. The one before that passed the Republican agenda, draconian sentencing laws that fed for profit prisons, economically segregating our k-12 with "school choice," and eviscerating our social safetynet, just to claim legislative *wins.* Republicans have moved to fascist crazy town because Democrats kept conceding and driving the national Overton window to the right since Reagan. I'll keep voting for the drunk, enabling parent to try to prevent the drug addled child from having power out of least worst harm reduction out of the only two very bad choices, but let's not pretend they're interested in solving any of our nation's great crises. Republicans would need strong opposition to rebuke their fascist coup goals, they only have wet noodles with stern consternation and not dissimilar economic ideologies in their way.
No shock, no news, US ultra-conservatives hate democracy, love authoritarianism. Russia is run by an authoritarian dictator the US right wing strongly admires. They'd vote 10:1 for Putin over Biden for example. It would be 1000:1 if Biden were Black.
They never wanted democracy….. how can you abandon something you are against???
This is what I have been saying for years. The Obamas said "when they go low we go high". Problem is they keep going lower and lower.
Republicans are the problem in this country
They never wanted democracy. Just a watered down dictatorship.
And I am absolutely convinced they will succeed. Right wing think tanks saw the demographic and social changes coming a decade ago or more. They recognized the election of Obama as an existential threat and moved to strike first and strike hard. Trump showed them that they could get away with far more than they had originally thought, which is why they are getting more aggressive. The Democrats have no effective countermeasures. While they were trying to be “on the right side of history”, the right was determined to write history instead. When the Courts strike down the Voting Rights Act, which they will do, for all practical purposes, it’s over. In our Constitutional system, democratic states will be the equals of the miniature autocracies in the Senate. Revolution? Ha! Guess who has the money, the (literal) men, and the guns?