making it difficult to vote is a feature not a bug.
The question isn’t why are they not doing anything but why didn’t they do anything when they had the chance.
Obama had the house and senate his first term and all we got was shitty healthcare and drone bombing wedding receptions. We need a new opposition party.
Obama had a filibuster proof majority for a grand total of 73 days and they did Obamacare. Dems haven’t had that since.
Get rid of filibuster. Pack the supreme court. Do whatever you have to do to do what is in the benefit of the public. It ain’t that hard, it is very popular but the democratic party is just not interested in working for the people.
I’m not sure I agree with that. Before suggesting someone wield that kind of power, consider how you’d feel about it if the opposition parties did that too.
At this point, I think the USA is better off just reforming its constitution. And possibly splitting the union into 5-10 separate smaller countries. The country is clearly not an effective union anymore, and to be honest, hasn’t been for a very long time. This isn’t the first time there’s been a north-south divide and it certainly won’t be the last, so why prolong the suffering? Just break it up and be done with it. Everyone will probably be much happier that way.
It’s less of a north/south divide and more of a rural/urban divide.
the fascist party has already done that. I’m not against taking off the gloves if the other guy is coming at me with a fucking knife.
It ain’t that hard, it is very popular but the democratic party is just not interested in working for the people.
It sure as shit was not popular in 2009. It’s not even popular now.
Most people don’t know jack fucking shit.
He had a filibuster-proof majority for a handful of weeks, and we got better healthcare than what was already on the table. While it’s not great healthcare, it’s still better than before.
That included some staunchly conservative Democrats, by the by. Many of whom were ultra “pro-life”, which means abortion rights weren’t gonna happen.
Additionally, people who mention drone strikes fail to a) recognize the tech was relatively new, but not so new that it was actually affordable to the DOD, and b) each president after has had more drone strikes.
But let’s not let facts get in the way of our outage or anything.
lah dee dah, every president since has used drones. what, all two of them?
Oh and the Dodd-Frank act regulating Wallstreet. And saving the economy from the massive financial crash with the Recovery Act. And an act that extended how long after being fired someone can file for unemployment. And new tax legislation that had tax increases to help pay for the investment in the economy with the recovery act. And around 50 other pieces of legislation.
Plus the “shitty health care” you mentioned mandated insurance companies have to cover people with pre-existing conditions giving insurance to tens of millions of people. And extended Medicaid to tens of millions of people providing relatively cheap medical care by comparison to before. Free? No. But many went from having bills of multiple hundreds a month to just 50. Again, perfect? No. But a massive fucking improvement.
All that in the 2 years he had both houses. Not his entire first term. Much of it was incredibly influential even if not perfect. To say we got nothing out of it is misrepresenting both what we got and what we had before.
Edit: and increasing the minimum wage.
And despite that we’re still in the shit
Well a major influence on that is because people keep voting for Republicans even when Democrats have progressive policies on their platforms. Republicans winning the House in 2010 kneecapped every single thing the Democrats had been striving for. 2010 had the lowest turn out for a midterm in decades. Often because of people on the left blaming Obama for not fixing everything right away, or because there is a depressingly large population of the country that don’t even know midterms exist.
Republicans fuck everything over, and people keep voting for them. Democrats don’t fix everything right away, and people refuse to vote for them. Such is the stupidity of the American public.
Democrats are also completely unprepared when they do have power. Where’s their project 2027? Why do they dilly dally and prevaricate when they know they have zero time to do anything?
And why do they constantly insist on playing nice? Republicans have been assholes my entire life and Democrats refuse to acknowledge this.
A political party that can only get power for four months out of forty years is broken and should be berated out of existence.
Are they unprepared though? Because every time they get full power they get shit done. Not as much as would be ideal but they still do stuff. And they also would have passed multiple more things in 21-22 if they had been given more seats in the Senate, having a 50-50 Senate made it only possible to get some things done not everything, they could have played dirty and gotten more done. For instance they weren’t able to pass their Voting reform bill that had passed the House and would drastically have changed and improved how we vote. But it’s still BS to say they don’t get anything done. That’s literally far right propaganda that has become so pervasive it convinces people on both sides that the Democrats are useless and never do anything.
That said, about Project 2025. It was put together by the Heritage Foundation. A think tank that does its work and puts it out for free. They’re backed by right wing billionaires. So the Republican party didn’t make it, despite it being their platform. Also wouldn’t it be Project 2029 for theirs since 2027 is a midterm and the whole point for that is to obstruct and do oversight on trump and his administration by having any power again. That said again. They don’t have the massive far right billionaires driving the equivalent of a Project 2025 and democratic voters also frequently argue against Billionaires driving something like that. Project 2025 is successful because all the work was done by Heritage.
Also also, I 100% agree that it’s insane they keep playing nice. They have to play dirty and that means breaking some rules which they seem unwilling to do.
But they are put into power by the Voters and then punished by the Voters despite doing significant legislation and improving the country when they get full power. So them not being able to take power for as much time as republicans has to do with the voters and the Republicans cheating with gerrymandering and voter suppression. And general Republican propaganda destroying the system.
But even this last Election Harris wanted to increase the minimum wage, wanted to put caps on rent increases, wanted to give first time home buyers 25,000 down payment assistance, wanted to legalize weed, wanted to introduce an Unrealized gains tax on people who have stock portfolios bigger than 100 million, increasing the corporate tax rate, talking about actually trying to punish companies who engage in shrinkflation. She had progressive policies on her platform, but instead of Democrats going out and voting and the progressive legislation driving people to the polls, everyone summarized her as only ever being not-Tump and them being the same and some saying she even had no policies. Democrats have things they campaign on, but the Voters say no. Mainly because the left doesn’t vote, or split their vote, and the right ALWAYS votes.
Personally, I’m not saying the Democrats can’t or shouldn’t be better, I think the party needs to be drastically reformed and we need to primary and kick out the older generation and we need more progressives who can talk more like real people. But I’m also trying to be fair about how things actually happen when they are in power.
Damn. Preach.
So stop blaming Democrats who have been actively trying to improve things, and blame the Republicans who have been, and actively are RIGHT NOW, destroying things.
I’ll blame the folks who have power to stop it and are doing exactly fuck all.
That includes the fucking voters, you know.
Try to backpedal with your self sabotage now, motherfuckers.
The DNC lit a billion dollars on fire to lose to a racist rapist again. The “adults in the room” couldn’t beat a semi-literate buffoon. AGAIN.
Voters should have voted, yeah, but in more civilized cultures the folks at the DNC would have fallen on their swords.
All that in the 2 years he had both houses
And they had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate for a whopping 2 months.
And that included Manchin and Lieberman. Ugh.
Which is when we got the ACA.
I.E. the literal bare minimum. They even managed to argue themselves out of the public option while still getting zero votes from Republicans.
On a bill originally derived from a conservative think tank.
You can’t berate people into voting the way you want. That is the lesson the DNC needs to learn if they actually want to win.
Social media trolls could do to realize that too.
The voting system doesn’t have to be this way. There are many far more representative electoral systems we could use over First-past-the-post voting.
Why aren’t the democrats doing anything? Because they don’t have to. What are you going to do, vote republican? “Vote for us… or else” is not democracy, it is a hostage situation. It is an abusive relationship.
If the democrats supported democracy as much as they say, they would be scrambling to pass electoral reform in blue states. If democrats believed what they say about the republican party, they would not hesitate to open the voting system to 3rd parties. If it’s all about preventing republican control, it wouldn’t matter who beat the Republicans so long as they are defeated. Who could possibly say no to more then one chance to beat the Republicans?
Here on lemmy and across the internet you should have seen many blue conservatives screaming to the heavens about the spoiler effect and how voting for 3rd parties is a vote for Trump and the republicans. This is the democratic party showing us that, yes, they do in fact understand that the voting system is a issue.
This has happened for longer then ive been alive. So if the issue is understood, and no reform over how we vote gas taken place, then we can easily assume that the democrats prefer this voting system alongside the republicans. The democrats, don’t want you to have any options in the voting booth. The democrats want this hostage situation. The democrats prefer trump and the republicans to win over having to actually compete for your vote.
We all understand that the republicans don’t support democracy, but now is the time to stop living in denial. The democrats also do not support democracy. They want safe states and the world’s easiest campaigns against the worst of us all. Democrats dont want to answer tough questions at debates. They want to put a party hack in front of you and laugh at your lack of an alternative. They will smash that “most important election ever” but 100 trillion times, collect checks from us and call it a day.
Electoral reform is not some impossible dream. We control how we vote at the state level. We dont need to wait for federal reform, it could still happen before the mid terms. So we must all demand the freedom to vote how we want from both the republican and democratic party in the states that continue to use FPTP voting.
Now is the time. No more waiting for the democrats to suddenly grow a backbone. We can choose a better way. We can have a future to look forward to. We can make the world a place people want to live in, at least more people then just the corporations and landlords that lord over us all.
Feel free to hate me bringing this up time and again. Shut me up by passing electoral reform across the country. I know more democracy is the solution to then problems we all face. Yeah it’s a long shot. But it’s better then having no shot at all.
Videos on Electoral Reform
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
Yeah now is the time to promote voting reform and try to make a serious third party.
So when people promote voting reform and making a third party we won’t be called splitting the vote and enabling Trump, right?
I think most third parties get blamed for that because they parachute into the presidential race a couple months before the election without anyone in lower offices.
A serious third party needs to start with congressional seats. Not the presidency.
A serious third party probably needs to start at the state or even municipal level, realistically.
Thank you for writing this.
And so long as men die, liberty will never perish©
(Yes, I want people to search for this quote and listen to the man)
The dems failed to convince enough people to vote for them. The largest share of votes in the last election was for no-one. Your primary job as a political party is to convince people to vote for you. if they can’t get people motivated in the face of bare faced fascism then they need to take a serious look at why their policies do not speak to americans.
Very few people who voted for Kamala were voting FOR Kamala… they were voting AGAINST Trump
so true.
How much are you getting paid by the billionaires in the dnc to simp this hard for them?
Just enough to cover my Lemmy monthly subscription.
Well the Google results i saw say about 64% of eligible voters voted, which is apparently high for the US.
Based on 2020 numbers it does look like a lot of 2020 Biden voters stayed home and most 2020 Trump voters came out again. Add in some economy frustration and surprise we get this shit show for 4 years…
The number of excuses people are willing to make for Democrats is astounding. I’ve been watching the Republicans obstruct the Democrats for the last sixteen years. Meanwhile, Trump has been in power for a month, and Democrats are fast-tracking his appointments, even when it’s a conspiracy theorist to lead the FBI or an anti-vaxer to head HHS. They’ve given unanimous consent to Trump’s agenda 345 times so far. You should be calling them every day and demanding they act like an actual opposition party, not justifying their collaboration with the fascists. Who knows, maybe if they show voters that they’re actually willing to stand up and fight for something, they might actually win a fucking election.
Why the lies?
Democrats used every second of their allotted talking time to block Gaetz’s confirmation as much as they could while holding a minority. You genuinely need to look up the meaning of the word “unanimous”.
Republicans obstructed democrats for so long by preventing a majority. The American people enabled that by voting them in.
Everything you just said is factually incorrect. Gaetz didn’t even have a confirmation. He gave up the nomination before confirmation hearings could start.
Also, you genuinely need to look up, “unanimous consent.” It’s a procedural method the Senate uses to speed up votes; if just one Democrat refuses to give unanimous consent to a vote, the Senate is forced to take a roll call vote and open the floor up to debate. It’s one of the many procedural hurdles Democrats could be using to block Trump’s agenda if they had the willpower.
I’ll walk that back - I think at some point I mixed up the hearings on RFK and Gaetz, so I gave the wrong name there. I apologize for that.
But even then, for RFK I read articles specifically highlighting the Democrat initiative to hold the floor; and the final vote came out along party lines (excepting some R senators that rebelled). So it sounds like the unanimous consent topic you’re referring to is on regular Senate work, not the confirmation. You specifically said they’ve “fast tracked his appointments” and I’m trying to understand that claim. To me, I’m more convinced that Democrats have political experience telling them that Indivisible’s plan is too easy to backfire, too easy for media to twist against them, and get them forcibly removed from office; especially since their efforts at filibustering have shown they’re not beyond putting in effort.
Given there’s clearly a differing view on what we’re talking about, I’ll apologize for calling you a liar, but it still doesn’t seem like a claim that makes sense to me.
Is the Democrat master plan to have a one party system? Everyone always and only vote Democrat, because if the other party of a two party system ever gets in to power we are screwed! It doesn’t sound like a good plan.
You guys had a good idea with Ross Perot in 1992. Look into that (especially how he got 0 electoral college votes) and maybe you’ll have a better idea of what you should be doing, instead of blaming each other.
One of those things where both
- Nonvoters who complain that Democrats aren’t doing enough to protect them are exactly the kind of entitled twats who attack what meagre defenses we have against fascism, and then whine (blaming those same defenses they themselves worked to undermine) when fascism attacks them.
AND
- Dems who do nothing in this period are inex-fucking-scusable, if predictably adhering to their norms-based civility politics schtick which plays so well with suburban white folk; and Dems in general are only interested in reform insofar as public opinion forces them to support it, and not an inch further.
are true.
Everyone is constantly making excuses for the Democrats, but if a political party had zero power except for four months out of forty fucking years you’d think we’d at least try to replace them.
I wrote up a big long thing and deleted it, because fuck that.
The country doesn’t want the change we want. Not even the Dem base, not when the ads start blaring and snarl words start getting tossed around. Even significantly left-leaning states like Cali and Washington regularly reject ballot initiatives for progressive measures.
That the Dems, milquetoast and moderate as they are, and as broad a coalition as they make, had power for 4 months out of 40 years is an aberration caused only by the massive fuck-ups of the Bush administration.
Correctly speaking, the Dems probably should’ve had none.
Yeah, I’ve come to the same conclusion: This country is fucked and there’s no way I’ll fit in anywhere.
I have two modes, really.
-
“Things are bad, but they will get better.” Looking at the past, things were immeasurably worse. That they’re still incredibly dogshit now is not a condemnation of our trajectory for all eternity (though I do suspect after this last election, there will need to be a tumultuous ‘correction’, civil rights or civil war style, to return to even the meagre rate of improvement we had before). 2025 is not 1925, and certainly not 1825 or 1025. Technological advancement aside, we have made incredible gains in the history of human civilization, and there’s no reason that it should stop now, despite the seeming power of the elites. Relatively speaking, we are immensely educated and powerful compared to past generations of the working class. Our tools of communication are far further removed from elite control - though that should be interpreted with a touch of ‘damnation by faint praise’. We may feel helpless and hopeless, but they are only feelings - feelings always pass, rightly or wrongly; and reality always asserts itself when the two collide.
-
“Holy fuck, what do you mean that by the time I’m in my 90s things might be slightly better? Assuming there isn’t a half-century detour that makes things worse first, Reconstruction style??? And it’s all reliant on the dipshits I meet in day-to-day life??? I’m either shooting myself or shooting up, fuck this”
I lost that first attitude when Trump won the first time.
And even when I’m around people who ostensibly share my political views I still feel like an outsider for a bevy of other reasons. “Did you see that funny commercial?”
“No I don’t see any commercials. Ever. “
“Oh man the halftime show!”
“Didn’t see that either.”
If my biology didn’t make a persuasive argument I’d swear I wasn’t human.
-
The country doesn’t want the change we want.
Of course not. Most of them are comfortable enough as-is. Most people don’t have a strong political philosophy - they’re just trying to maintain what they have, and maybe find a way to have a bit more.
Of course not. Most of them are comfortable enough as-is.
Don’t really think comfort has much to do with it. Revolutionary behavior tends to spill out from relatively privileged demographics, and suffering demographics can suffer seemingly infinitely without hitting some point of discomfort where revolution occurs.
While some people don’t vote out of apathy, others are a target of indirect disenfranchisement that prevents the working poor from voting.
Others still do it because of religious dedication to the accelerationist belief that making the human experience worse will magically cause the working class to gain class consciousness and revolt. You know. Like has never occurred in recorded history…
The crowd that didn’t vote for Kamala have mysteriously disappeared from their soapbox and went into hiding…
I seeing us everywhere. I’m not sure what your talking about
I gotta start saving this exact same comment every time I see it. Still pushing for electoral reform and a dissolution of the two party system on a daily basis. This is the right time to do so right? Now you can’t cry “Oh it’s to close to the election!”
Well, have you pushed to replace First past the post voting in your state so people can be free to vote how they want? Will you be complaining about 3rd party mid term voters after a year and a half of doing nothing to change the mathematically flawed voting system in your state?
I didn’t have to roll out the red carpet for Donald “Israel needs to win and win fast” Trump to push for voting reform.
Every terrible thing we told you would happen is currently happening, so I hope you’re happy for queer Americans and about the fate of Palestine. You got exactly what we told you we would get. I hope you’re comfy on your soapbox, because it’s not comfy for trans people right now. Thanks a lot.
Hi I voted for Stein
Well least you voted. If only 30 mill more decided to vote even third party it would have shook things up. They didn’t even care enough about country to do that.
Repeatedly banning people with different viewpoints will do that. You chose to become an echo chamber.
Sorry I’m out of the loop.
Who got banned for different viewpoints?
Look at the modlog for . world, Ctrl f “troll” for the last 6 months.
I’m lazy can you help out and give me one or two examples?
Nope, you guys appointed Hitler again to stop the commies and leftists. Stop being a lazy liberal.
That was a lot of words to say you can’t.
You’re a weird flyingsquid alt.
Horseshit. They got what they wanted and then shut up about it.
Nope, just because you stopped seeing them in your walled garden doesn’t mean they aren’t there. They’re just treating you the same as Trump supporters because they know what side liberals were in in Nazi Germany.
But hey, at least they elected you to represent them in these comment sections! Hope the pay is good. Don’t look like fun to me.
Da.
The modern Democratic party fights harder against its own “base” than they do against the opposing party. People still came out in droves to vote for them despite that but their dedication to complacency in a system that is failing everybody but the rich left enough people behind to tip the scales. The Dems have enabled this and anybody who expects them to save us from it is delusional.
Now is exactly the right time to criticize the dems, make them step up their game. Would be better 4 years ago, but here we are.
Totally agree “but here we are”, but a better time would be 1992
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerikaanse_presidentsverkiezingen_1992
If you’ve got a time machine, feel free.
The Dems are a minority in both the House and the Senate at the moment, they’re literally powerless.
The best time to criticize them would have been over the last two years, when they actually could have done something about the mess.Being in the minority never stopped the republicans. There are things the democrats can do to obstruct.
Now is a great time to criticize them for their past actions and current attitudes, but a poor time to expect protection from them, on account of their minority position in the government.
but a poor time to expect protection from them
Where did this “protection” idea come from?
No one expects “protection”, we expect them to lift a finger to do the job they were sent to washington to do, or get the eff out of the way and let someone with a spine and some morals get it done. The only one out there doing the job is sanders and the progressives. All the other dems only came together to vote for tougher laws on illegal video streaming sites, and now they are pushing to gut peoples protection to say what they want online.
and back in jan: https://politics.slashdot.org/story/25/01/30/028201/democrat-teams-up-with-movie-industry-to-propose-website-blocking-law
They are doing nothing but what their donors want, as usual. They learned nothing and continue to do nothing.
No one expects “protection”, we expect them to lift a finger to do the job they were sent to washington to do,
What were they sent to Washington to do, again?
Dont make me pull out school house rock videos of how our supposed “democracy” works.
They were sent to Washington to participate in the legislature. I could go for several more details here, but the core of it comes down to - they were sent to Washington to protect the rights and interests of their constituents through the passage and restriction of laws.
ie ‘protection’.
I expect them to do at least as well as the GOP from the minority position. If they can’t do that, what right do they have to expect our votes?
The Republicans seem to be able to stop a lot of things, especially if the opposing party not only doesn’t control every branch of government, but doesn’t have a 60+ majority of the senate with a comfortable margin to write off the {Manchins, Sinemas, Libermans, etc.}. But now suddenly a minority party can’t stop their opponents from doing things, even if it is blatantly unconstitutional? It seems like the Democrats are never playing to win.
In reality, the Democrats want this all to continue, because if Trump fucks things up enough and destroys things enough, the Democrats only appeal of “we aren’t the Republicans” can for once, become a winning strategy in 2026/2028.
That’s the key “stops a lot of things”. The way that Congress is structured makes it pretty easy to stop things since there are many choke points. Notice that republicans aren’t really trying to “do things” in Congress?
The current issues and actions are being driven by the executive branch where they’re ignoring the law and constitution . Being in the minority in Congress means that Dems can’t trigger investigations or much of anything to formally push back unless they’re joined by some republicans.
I’ll agree that they could make more noise and should block things up more than they’re doing presently, but these actions wouldn’t really stop or significantly slow any of this.
I’m sick of the green lanterism that gets trotted out to suggest that they’re not stopping things because they don’t want to. Voters didn’t give them power in the last election, so we’re working from a position of weakness.
There are still veto points and lawsuits to be made. Along with the more vocal opposition that you admit that they should engage in. It is neither that they could perfectly stop everything, but that they could actually start trying. The Democrats decided that they should sit back because if Trump fucks things up enough, they will have an easy time in 2026/2028, without changing their usual platform of “We are not the Republicans, we will give you nothing else”.
Www.indivisible.org is doing some good work getting on democratic “leaders” asses to do something. They also have something called the Payback Project. They are making a public list of all of those who do nothing during this administration and will use funds to buy ads during election time showing what that specific Democrat did or didn’t do.
My sentiments exactly
