defeated by the 'just fucking do something' caucus
OK last comment, but I really think this article captures a lot of my frustrations with the party (maybe the median voter too idk) But if they ran on packing the courts, being a 'dictator on day 1', green new deal, tough on monopolists , doing whatever needs to be done - basically everything Trump's promising to do but instead of for massively unpopular niche issues for stuff people actually like. I genuinely don't care with what means they want to do it. People say- Trump will destroy democracy! And all I can hear is that maybe he's going to actually do something. (The tragedy is that all of the somethings he's going to do are Bad) but imagine! If our side had 1/16th the gumption. It would be heaven on earth I barely even trusted Kamala to have the political will to get Roe v Wayde passed tbh. The dems have been punting on that one for decades
I think it's fair to say that the enthusiasm behind Bernie Sanders was because of the idea that he'd 'fucking do something.' I think people over 30 were jaded about that because the dude has been in government his whole fucking life and has yet to fucking do something. It's been interesting to watch AOC turn from firebrand to wallflower. Maybe she's biding her time. Maybe she's been subsumed by the system. It's also abundantly clear that the politicians we see the most are the ones who aren't doing their fucking jobs - MTG, Gaetz, etc. IF: you get into government because you want to 'fucking do something' BUT: nothing can actually be done THEN: (gestures vaguely everywhere) Jimmy Carter was a populist. Then he got to government and nothing happened. Schwartzenegger was a populist. Then he got to government and nothing happened. FDR came into power by basically taking the wind out of Huey Long's sails; by adopting 70% of the crazy socialist policies Long wanted and dragging them into the mainstream, FDR got four frickin' terms out of it. But that was what, 80 years ago? The green new deal was a layup. Fuckin' legalized marijuana was a layup. Student loan forgiveness was a layup. Price controls on groceries could have been a goddamn executive order. And yet.
Democrats are not doing anything because they’re captured. They take money from the same business interests and banks that the Republicans do. It’s almost a controlled opposition party— they exist to hold things in place until the next republican term. They aren’t there to do things, they barely bother to pretend to be interested in that. In fact, I’d say they’re not even really an “ideas” party. If they had ideas, they’d want to get them out. They don’t, which is why Heritage Foundation can spend millions on Right Wing media outlets, radio, TV (multiple channels), websites, and so on. Democrats had Air America, but didn’t really invest in it. So now it’s NPR, MSNBC, and Bread Tube. That’s how into getting things done they are. Podcasters, Vaush, and MSNBC and the three political shows on NPR. They don’t even believe in their message enough to bother getting it out there. The way most people find out about anything the democrats actually want to do is republicans telling them it’s bad. Completely rearguard action.
I think I would temper this by arguing there's no real alternative. The 2024 elections cost $16b. Bill Gates gave $100m, Elon Musk gave $150m. Kamala Harris got 74m votes; in order to counterbalance Elon Fucking Musk every Harris voter would have needed to chip in $2. In order to counterbalance Musk & Gates, they needed to chip in 68 cents. But now we're talking campaign finance reform and we're both already asleep with boredom.Democrats are not doing anything because they’re captured. They take money from the same business interests and banks that the Republicans do.
Honestly I think part of the problem is how long the campaign is. It takes several years to run for president, and the formal kickoff is often more than a year out. People in formally elected offices basically spend 70% of their time in office preparing to campaign and actively campaigning for office. Of course they need that much money.
Danielle Allen did a series of ten pieces for the WaPo but they didn't exactly set the world afire. I'll say this: WA state does jungle primaries, which helped contribute to outcomes like this: Our Trump-annointed gubernatorial candidate was Semi Bird, who walked out of the primary with 11% of the vote (even though the Republicans had registered five candidates with the same name as the Democratic candidate). The most contentious and expensive race in Washington was for Commissioner of Public Lands, primarily because the Republican who was running was a big timber shill who got primaried for impeaching Trump. EDIT: hot off the presses
I do not trust Gluesenkamp Perez. I can't remember what she did or said years ago that first raised my warning flags, but the recent banana peeling claims are another questionable installment. Honestly I get Paulina-Luna vibes from her. If you have to be a pandering liar to get elected, again, curtains for democracy. Speaking of which, I'll get back to you about the information environment in that other thread soon. Have a good Monday bro(s).
I genuinely don't know what the Dems want to do. Kamala's climate change policy was some of the most baffling word salad I've ever had to read. It seemed like every week they shifted positions or compromised on something I figured was a core Dem value. Doesn't matter either way cuz they lost in a landslide lol
I think the first step to getting the party back on track is to invest in getting the message out there. Have a network or three on the radio or TV, have news sites, etc that can explain what the ideas are and why they work and where they’ve actually done good things. Start talking about your ideas. And when you do something TELL THE PEOPLE. It’s like the democrats almost want it to be top secret. I’ve had this conversation a few times with conservatives convinced there’s a conspiracy to poison Americans with additives in foods. Exhibit A is that a lot of things that are common in American food are not in European foods. So the government is obviously trying to kill us, population control and so on. No, the European Union is simply much more willing to ban poison from their foods than our FDA is. So this would be an excellent thing for democrats to be actually talking about and making the case for smart regulations to protect people. They’re generally MIA. And the same is true of other things. The infrastructure bill Biden passed is building lots of highways. Not one will have any sort of signage telling people that this is the infrastructure bill at work making roads better.
I agree. But until you have a message you believe in and are willing to put out far and wide without apologizing for having an agenda. Look at the GOP — they believe in stupid things, but I guarantee you that everyone reading my words can absolutely tell you what the6 want to do and why they want to do that. The words are repeated in every organ of the GOP, every radio show, every news organ, every podcast, every white paper issued by a GOP think tank all have a message. And because they have that message and actually not only believe in that vision but are absolutely committed to it. I don’t think I could make the same bet on the democratic side. They have no vision of government, of culture, or why they think that. The democratic organs of culture mostly document GOP bad and snipe at other democrats. There’s nothing really to hold people to doing.
The basic issue, as I see it, is that the Republicans can pander to divisive social issues (because they don't cost anything) and then give money away to business in the Name of Freedom™. Democrats can be liberal AF about social issues (because they don't cost anything) and then ask for a whole bunch of big government projects that cost a fuckton and interfere with big business. Spitballing, I'd say Democrats (the voters) care about health insurance, social welfare, global warming, reduced police militarization, cheaper college and cheaper housing. And I would say that for every one of those concerns there's a billion dollar lobbying machine hell-bent on the destruction of anyone who poses even a vague threat to them. Republicans? When there's money involved it's invariably takes the form of Give Tax Revenue To Crony Capitalists. Any democrat who actually runs on doing what democrats want is going to get creamed.
Other problem is, unless you're willing to let the president be a tyrant, one person with integrity in government is barely going to help at all. You'd need to kick out all the existing corporate dems first before anything could get accomplished.
this is hitting the nail so square on the head that it splinters. half of the oligarchy can't even put out a good liar except maybe Pete, who is phenomenal, and secretly a radical socialist. just believe me, i will repeat it a lot, for effectivity. "Mayor" Pete Buttigieg is secretly a radical socialist hey man what do you think about Pete (some people call him "Mayor" Pete) Buttigieg? no but fantastic comment, I am trying to give you a rhetorical treat I guess Elect Mayor Pete for socialism edit mk: the SOROSBUX pay interface is broken there is nothing in my account for this
Yeah my enthusiasm for Bernie is more the symbolism of someone with at least passably good values in office. No pretense that he could get anything done. Which is another baffling thing about the Dems- if you're going to do literally nothing, why compromise all your values? Why have a stupid hedged weaksauce plan that you don't do instead of an exciting cool plan that you don't do. Honestly the IRA passing at all was a shock to me, weaksauce as it was. My only hope from the Trump admin is that the Dems exploit all the broken norms to 'fucking do something' but god knows they haven't ever in my lifetime, idk about yours but sounds like not then either. At this point I kinda want to see America fall before I do, just for the schadenfreude
If you don’t believe in the state, or if you don’t associate enlightenment notions with the American project, then rolling back democratic protections for working people simply doesn’t matter. If America itself is immoral, then who cares what the governing apparatus looks like? ^ honesly feel like this a lot of the time, mostly because of stuff like You can multiply this dynamic across the Biden administration in every important area. Enforcers moved against big meatpackers, the USDA signed contracts with big meatpackers. The Antitrust Division brought antitrust cases against big tech to open AI to new entrants, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer killed big tech antitrust legislation and brought in big tech lobbyists to craft AI policy. They're pathetic, and nobody seems to want to be able to to anything valuable. The only reason I bother to vote is to keep people out of camps and the dems are running on anti-immigration and keeping trans kids out of sports
it turns out that if you constantly say that either you can't do anything about problems or that the problems don't exist, people view you as useless losers the party of adulting strikes again
I am operating under "effectively no, after a tremendous and frankly magical national emergency necessitates full constitutional usurpation", at least for the office of president. (I stole this:) The democrats are standing around arguing "that's not in the rule book! they can't DO that!!" while a dog dunks on them over and over and over. More airbud memes, please
Yeah I don't think the issue is really "doing something", it is effectively communicating what has been done. We do not have a press capable or willing to communicate that. I mean look at Figure 1 - https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/unpacking-the-boom-in-us-construction-of-manufacturing-facilities . The disconnect in public perception is a rift of several billion parsecs, feels like.
I guess - I mean it works but govt subsidies for big industry is not like the exciting sort of thing that makes the press, and is such a small patch on the big issues. Their weed policy was to pardon like a thousand people and otherwise change nothing , their healthcare policy is same old same old , they did very little to tax billionaires or fight inequality , everything they said they wanted to do was conveniently blocked , the people calling for a green new deal get iced out. The student loans was blocked by the courts so they shrugged. Roe v Wade ended while Dems had the presidency and they shrugged. Trans people are being attacked while Dems had the presidency and they shrugged. Legit, the only things they did was CHIPS ($$ to billionaires) IRA ($$ to billionaires + some actually good climate stuff), $$ for more highway lanes and billionaires, and as much funding to Israel as they could possibility manage. Not sure what's really there to brag about.
I don't think Joe ran on it, but Kamala did announce that she would legalize weed veryyyyy late in the campaign, to the point where even if the press would have been willing to make a big deal of it, it wouldn'ta mattered. The campaign was.. it was OK. Almost! It was almost OK. It was certainly not great, but again, clearly Trump has proven that the quality of campaign largely doesn't matter. Like five days ago Walmart was like "oh btw, tariffs would probably be mostly passed on to the customer, simply, yeah", and it was just... no one's job during campaign season to explain that. Nobody's. Same guy we gave "reasonably explain what mass deportations likely entail" to. Again, the press's true failure in this moment cannot be overstated. But yes, as elsewhere has been mentioned, the dems are definitely a controlled opposition party. There was just a quick wrest within the oligarchy, the south africans struck in the twilight of the campaign multiple times, and with large investments. Unsolicited, semi-concrete predictions, you say? Great idea. I suspect they'll 25th Amendment Trump, but I don't know when. I don't know when I'd want them to, or if. They're all too socially inept to realize that JD doesn't have the juice, and maybe handing Ozempic Jr. "whatever [donuts] work[s], I guess" after Trump has done god knows what for even one year is gonna be like Peter Theil's suicide, for starters. No, no we are in no man's land. And one thing, li'l silver lining, is that I don't have to give one flying fuck what the dems do or say anymore, because that's all about to be completely irrelevant. But thank god, nuclear war averted, Ukraine will be surrendered af and Russia will threaten Moldova and the Finns, and fuck, we might join 'em, maybe bomb Mexico, it's big peace time cunts. edit: history will probably show that the Israel shit was singularly Biden. Singularly. Yeah I'm real torn up to see him go. This fucking country deserves itself, honestly. It's fine
Found it! Its not on her main issues page, instead its buried as point three here: https://kamalaharris.com/agenda/ Read that and tell me they're making the media's job easy. Kamala also has the opposite problem of Trump. We -know- Trump's going to do things so we can assume he'll do our favorite subset but be blocked on the things we think are awful. Like, surely he's not ~really~ going to . . . etc etc Whereas Kamala can say whatever but we all know she's going to not care about our favorite thing. Maybe she'll do a tiny bit of it? Which tiny bit?
I mean sure she could say she will but she's said a lot of things. I don't think anyone believed she would legalize weed. I certainly didn't. Never heard that part of her campaign before the election fwiw, but someone online showed me where it was hidden: on a four paragraph part of her site where she said what she'd do for black men mainly talking about how much she knows how much they like bitcoin. I hate NYT as much as the next guy but if her messaging was awful you can only blame the media so much. Edit: its nowhere to be found here: https://kamalaharris.com/issues/ Nor is anything remotely comprehensible. Its ten thousand words long and carefully written to say nothing. I dare you to find anything interesting there to talk about.
For that matter, what have the dems accomplished in my lifetime? I guess Obamacare which despite being half assed garbage ripping off the Republicans plan entirely is still better than what was there. Not sure I can come up with a second example. They let the Voter Rights Act die with them at the helm though. And did nothing for BLM. And shot the Occupy protestors. And voted on the nonprofit killing bill.