2w ago

Why isn't anyone helping?

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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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  And that included Manchin and Lieberman. Ugh.
  
  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.
  
  Voters should have voted, yeah, but in more civilized cultures the folks at the DNC would have fallen on their swords.
  At least then we would've gotten some satisfaction out of the election.
  Not much. But some.
  
  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?
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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’s less of a north/south divide and more of a rural/urban divide.

519 comments