I wish American Voters had memories longer than 4 years. But they don’t.
They got pissed at Bush and the Republicans in 2006 for the war and in 2008 for crashing the economy.
And 2 years later in 2010 they voted in a red wave not seen since reconstruction.
Donald Trump tried to overthrow the government and 4 years later they gave him another chance. If Trump shot a crowd of people on 5th avenue the kids of the victims would vote for him 4 years later.
Keep in mind that the voting system itself is rigged. States with lower populations tend to have more representation per capita due to the Electoral College. This biases everything towards red states.
And that doesn’t even get at the decades of gerrymandering…
There were massive voter suppression campaigns in both those election cycles. And it doesn’t help that the neo Liberals highjacked the democratic party, marginalizing labor. People are not motivated to vote for the lesser of two evils.
People are not motivated to vote for the lesser of two evils.
Neoliberals and centrists need to get this through their firewall of condescencion towards leftists, no matter how much y’all hate leftists (and laugh at leftists with your more conservative friends) you need to understand the average person in the US hates you and your leaders far more than than they hate genuine leftists that actually fight for the working class instead of spitting on them and publicly calling them stupid.
Leftists in America are a tiny minority that happens to be in a kingmaker role because the Dems and Repubs are nearly evenly matched. There is no vast silent majority of Leftists. You’re in an internet bubble.
Your ideas got us here. With democracy hanging by a thread because both the corporate Democrats and Republicans spent decades weakening the lower classes to enrich themselves. How many 70-80% approval rating policy idea have the Democrats spurned over the years because it would mildly inconvenience their mega donors in the short term?
Decades? They had the presidency and both halves of Congress for the first two years under Obama and all they gave us was Mitt Romney’s health care plan. And again during the first half of Biden’s term.
The Democratic leadership keeps actively stopping attempts to corral the ability of congressmen to get rich off inside trading. They spent the whole campaign season last year supporting and assisting in a very public genocide. Trustbusting has basically been forgotten - we only have the illusion of choice in our much each industry from the media to even our food products are dominated by like 3-4 companies within it.
Whenever they do happen to get power, they do nothing with it, and then act surprised when they immediately lose it again.
They had the presidency and both halves of Congress for the first two years under Obama
They had a majority that could override Republicans for all of like 2 months
And again during the first half of Biden’s term.
Never had a supermajority, even though they did get a few epic bills in through some brilliant legislative maneuvering.
and all they gave us was Mitt Romney’s health care plan
Obamacare has saved literally thousands of lives and saved countless more from poverty inducing medical costs and you act like that’s nothing. It’s the single best piece of legislation in the last 50 years at least. And we did that with just a few months of power.
Anyway. For your actual specifics
The Democratic leadership keeps actively stopping attempts to corral the ability of congressmen to get rich off inside trading
I didn’t act like it was nothing. It was a band-aid on a gushing artery that further cemented health insurance companies into our lives. It briefly slowled the continually rising costs people continue to struggle with today. But they pretty much called it a day for the next decade and a half-where now those same companies are auto denying 30% of their claims hoping no one fights the ruling. Without the public option Obamacare wasn’t the solution we needed. It just kicked the can down the road to our current disaster.
This post is full of hogwash, brilliant legislative manuevering? Like Biden throwing up his hands and saying “oh geez, can’t fight for a $15 minimum wage because of the parlimentarian!” which is hilarious now to watch the Republicans steam roll the Parlimentarian as if it mattered.
I am sorry but I have to laugh in your face, do you think these bills proposed to curb insider trading by the Democrats every had ANY chance of succeeding when people like Nancy Pelosi are getting rich off it in PLAIN SIGHT to the american public? Ok, Republcians did block those bills but they were dead before they were even drafted by virtue of Democrats in power not actually opposing these things because it benefits them.
Where has a consistent fight and conversation around campaign finance reform been in the Democratic party from people other than Bernie Sanders and a handful of others? Centrist democrats just let that drop as soon as they torpoed Bernie… and look where NOT choosing to focus on fighting that has got us? We probably can’t recover democracy now and the blame DIRECTLY falls on the opposition party to fascism not doing anything when they had the power to do so.
Both during Biden’s term and in the decades leading up to this moment, the Democratic party catastrophically failed and capitalism has catastrophically failed, stop trying to rehabilitate it because you can’t handle having to evolve your beliefs more than you feel comfortable with.
Your post is a cynical twisting of reality into a narrative that fits what you want, Democrats are trying and they just need our support!
I am sorry but your vision of reality is wrong, they have not by and large been fighting for the average USian, and if you think they are you are almostttt as foolish as a Trump supporter.
Don’t call leftists who point out that the Democratic party is rotten to the core “cynical”, when it is you that is the cynical one trying to bring nervous people back into a mindset that things aren’t existentially broken, they just need to be tweaked, some of those people will listen to you and it is going to hurt them terribly and they are going to walk away far more cynical and unwilling to fight than if they had never listened to you in the first place.
All people are equal before the law. Discrimination is abhorrent, and people’s personal freedoms should be respected until they harm others. Liberals and Leftists pretty much agree 100% on this so I won’t spend more time on it.
Capitalism is the most powerful social engine for beneficial progress that the world has ever seen, but we need to keep it under control. It’s like an engine - harnessed, throttled, and controlled explosive power to drive us forward at a manageable pace. Strong regulations, strong unions, progressive taxes, and heavy government incentives are the ways we keep capitalism under control. Currently, it is OUT of control and is doing far more harm than good.
Taxes on the rich should be higher, loopholes should be closed, and enforcement should be stepped up. There’s no consensus on exactly how much higher, but they all agree they should be higher.
At the same time, we recognize the potential economic effects of taxing the rich. If we’re not careful, they’ll just move their money elsewhere. So we want to raise taxes to the extent possible without triggering flight of the wealthy.
Everyone deserves a minimum standard of living. Food, shelter, and healthcare are human rights and should be free for those who can’t afford it.
Immigrants are good for the economy. Even the illegal ones. We should be making immigration easier.
Climate change is real, is man-made, and it is our duty as humans to do our best to fix it. However, we can do so to a large extent without causing hardship among everyday people, by making intelligent changes upstream from consumers. We can have economic growth AND tackle climate change, if we’re smart about it.
Obviously, left-leaning liberalism is a wide-ranging ideology but these are the main ones that came to mind immediately. The biggest difference between liberalism and Leftism is that Leftists want to tear down capitalism and Liberals want to control it.
Leftism is that Leftists want to tear down capitalism and Liberals want to control it.
No the biggest difference is that Leftists want to address the fundamental, existential problems with capitalism and Liberals want to paper over it and not face the reality while still pretending they are part of the solution.
I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sounds of thousands of starving Ukranians. What was that again? Something about Capitalism being the root of all evil and Socialism being perfect in every way?
I’m into it. I do think capitalism has far overstayed its welcome. I agree with everything you’ve written here, I just see it as a stepping stone to socialism rather than an end goal.
Fair enough. I think a lot of Liberals view socialism (like no shit real “own the means of production” socialism, rather than European capitalist-lite socialism of today) the same way as me: it sounds nice, it just doesn’t seem to work very well in practice. But hey if we can get it to work, neat. In the mean time, let’s get capitalism under control.
There is no “in the meantime”, capitalism is causing a general collapse of society and the entire biosphere of earth there is no tweaking the ship smashing into a iceberg to be beneficial for the ship, the ship already hit the iceberg.
This is what a lot of young leftists hand wave away
Everyone deserves a minimum standard of living. Food, shelter, and healthcare are human rights and should be free for those who can’t afford it. - Immigrants are good for the economy. Even the illegal ones. We should be making immigration easier.
Taking in infinite immigrants and providing food shelter and healthcare for them and their lineage until the end of time ALONG WITH all of the disadvantaged citizens is not economically sustainable. You’d effectively be turning the U.S. into the world’s homeless shelter. At some point, likely sooner than later, all the raised taxes in the world on the businesses that don’t leave won’t be enough to care for everyone.
I’m all for compassion but it has to be reasoned compassion. You can’t just look at what your version of Utopia is and say that’s what we should do. Humanity is not perfect and neither will any society it builds be. But at the same time we can’t let perfect be the enemy of the good, and so we engage in these discussions.
Taking in infinite immigrants and providing food shelter and healthcare for them and their lineage until the end of time ALONG WITH all of the disadvantaged citizens is not economically sustainable.
I disagree.
You’d effectively be turning the U.S. into the world’s homeless shelter.
Fuck yeah we would.
Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
Here’s the thing about immigrants: they start businesses. They get degrees. They make money. They pay taxes. They drive the economic engine forward. They’re not helpless fucking children, they are smart and driven and capable adults who happen to not speak your language and may have browner skin than you.
Democracy will not save us. People that won’t vote unless they fall in love can fall out of love much more easily.
Do vote, it’s low effort and it can make a marginal difference. Just make your plans assuming you party will lose and if they win they will disappoint.
Your treating this as if the same people are voting different ways. It’s usually much more along the lines of voters staying home one election and voting in another.
I wish American Voters had memories longer than 4 years. But they don’t.
They got pissed at Bush and the Republicans in 2006 for the war and in 2008 for crashing the economy.
And 2 years later in 2010 they voted in a red wave not seen since reconstruction.
Donald Trump tried to overthrow the government and 4 years later they gave him another chance. If Trump shot a crowd of people on 5th avenue the kids of the victims would vote for him 4 years later.
Keep in mind that the voting system itself is rigged. States with lower populations tend to have more representation per capita due to the Electoral College. This biases everything towards red states.
And that doesn’t even get at the decades of gerrymandering…
EC needs to go away, too.
And they have the gall to say they’re voting that way “for the economy”
There were massive voter suppression campaigns in both those election cycles. And it doesn’t help that the neo Liberals highjacked the democratic party, marginalizing labor. People are not motivated to vote for the lesser of two evils.
Neoliberals and centrists need to get this through their firewall of condescencion towards leftists, no matter how much y’all hate leftists (and laugh at leftists with your more conservative friends) you need to understand the average person in the US hates you and your leaders far more than than they hate genuine leftists that actually fight for the working class instead of spitting on them and publicly calling them stupid.
It won’t. They benefit from corporate greed as much as the right does. They are enablers of fascism.
Leftists in America are a tiny minority that happens to be in a kingmaker role because the Dems and Repubs are nearly evenly matched. There is no vast silent majority of Leftists. You’re in an internet bubble.
YOU need to get onboard with OUR ideas.
Your ideas got us here. With democracy hanging by a thread because both the corporate Democrats and Republicans spent decades weakening the lower classes to enrich themselves. How many 70-80% approval rating policy idea have the Democrats spurned over the years because it would mildly inconvenience their mega donors in the short term?
Can you name any?
Democrats haven’t been in power for decades.
Decades? They had the presidency and both halves of Congress for the first two years under Obama and all they gave us was Mitt Romney’s health care plan. And again during the first half of Biden’s term.
The Democratic leadership keeps actively stopping attempts to corral the ability of congressmen to get rich off inside trading. They spent the whole campaign season last year supporting and assisting in a very public genocide. Trustbusting has basically been forgotten - we only have the illusion of choice in our much each industry from the media to even our food products are dominated by like 3-4 companies within it.
Whenever they do happen to get power, they do nothing with it, and then act surprised when they immediately lose it again.
They had a majority that could override Republicans for all of like 2 months
Never had a supermajority, even though they did get a few epic bills in through some brilliant legislative maneuvering.
Obamacare has saved literally thousands of lives and saved countless more from poverty inducing medical costs and you act like that’s nothing. It’s the single best piece of legislation in the last 50 years at least. And we did that with just a few months of power.
Anyway. For your actual specifics
Biden calls for ban on congressional stock trading - never taken up by Repub led Congress
Democrats make last-ditch effort to ban stock trading by lawmakers
FTC Sues Amazon for Illegally Maintaining Monopoly Power
United Health Lawsuit Named Among FTC’s Biggest Wins
Big Pharma Braces for More FTC Suits Over M&A Bound for Approval
Gaza I’ll give you. That’s really the only hugely popular (among non-republicans) issue they refused to support.
I didn’t act like it was nothing. It was a band-aid on a gushing artery that further cemented health insurance companies into our lives. It briefly slowled the continually rising costs people continue to struggle with today. But they pretty much called it a day for the next decade and a half-where now those same companies are auto denying 30% of their claims hoping no one fights the ruling. Without the public option Obamacare wasn’t the solution we needed. It just kicked the can down the road to our current disaster.
2 months is a long time.
Why don’t they have legislation ready to go?
This post is full of hogwash, brilliant legislative manuevering? Like Biden throwing up his hands and saying “oh geez, can’t fight for a $15 minimum wage because of the parlimentarian!” which is hilarious now to watch the Republicans steam roll the Parlimentarian as if it mattered.
I am sorry but I have to laugh in your face, do you think these bills proposed to curb insider trading by the Democrats every had ANY chance of succeeding when people like Nancy Pelosi are getting rich off it in PLAIN SIGHT to the american public? Ok, Republcians did block those bills but they were dead before they were even drafted by virtue of Democrats in power not actually opposing these things because it benefits them.
Where has a consistent fight and conversation around campaign finance reform been in the Democratic party from people other than Bernie Sanders and a handful of others? Centrist democrats just let that drop as soon as they torpoed Bernie… and look where NOT choosing to focus on fighting that has got us? We probably can’t recover democracy now and the blame DIRECTLY falls on the opposition party to fascism not doing anything when they had the power to do so.
Both during Biden’s term and in the decades leading up to this moment, the Democratic party catastrophically failed and capitalism has catastrophically failed, stop trying to rehabilitate it because you can’t handle having to evolve your beliefs more than you feel comfortable with.
Your post is a cynical twisting of reality into a narrative that fits what you want, Democrats are trying and they just need our support!
I am sorry but your vision of reality is wrong, they have not by and large been fighting for the average USian, and if you think they are you are almostttt as foolish as a Trump supporter.
Don’t call leftists who point out that the Democratic party is rotten to the core “cynical”, when it is you that is the cynical one trying to bring nervous people back into a mindset that things aren’t existentially broken, they just need to be tweaked, some of those people will listen to you and it is going to hurt them terribly and they are going to walk away far more cynical and unwilling to fight than if they had never listened to you in the first place.
So I’m assuming you’re a liberal? Let’s hear these ideas, seriously.
Sure!
All people are equal before the law. Discrimination is abhorrent, and people’s personal freedoms should be respected until they harm others. Liberals and Leftists pretty much agree 100% on this so I won’t spend more time on it.
Capitalism is the most powerful social engine for beneficial progress that the world has ever seen, but we need to keep it under control. It’s like an engine - harnessed, throttled, and controlled explosive power to drive us forward at a manageable pace. Strong regulations, strong unions, progressive taxes, and heavy government incentives are the ways we keep capitalism under control. Currently, it is OUT of control and is doing far more harm than good.
Taxes on the rich should be higher, loopholes should be closed, and enforcement should be stepped up. There’s no consensus on exactly how much higher, but they all agree they should be higher.
At the same time, we recognize the potential economic effects of taxing the rich. If we’re not careful, they’ll just move their money elsewhere. So we want to raise taxes to the extent possible without triggering flight of the wealthy.
Everyone deserves a minimum standard of living. Food, shelter, and healthcare are human rights and should be free for those who can’t afford it.
Immigrants are good for the economy. Even the illegal ones. We should be making immigration easier.
Climate change is real, is man-made, and it is our duty as humans to do our best to fix it. However, we can do so to a large extent without causing hardship among everyday people, by making intelligent changes upstream from consumers. We can have economic growth AND tackle climate change, if we’re smart about it.
Obviously, left-leaning liberalism is a wide-ranging ideology but these are the main ones that came to mind immediately. The biggest difference between liberalism and Leftism is that Leftists want to tear down capitalism and Liberals want to control it.
No the biggest difference is that Leftists want to address the fundamental, existential problems with capitalism and Liberals want to paper over it and not face the reality while still pretending they are part of the solution.
I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sounds of thousands of starving Ukranians. What was that again? Something about Capitalism being the root of all evil and Socialism being perfect in every way?
What? What the hell are you going on about?
Did I say socialism was perfect?
Don’t strawman me.
I’m into it. I do think capitalism has far overstayed its welcome. I agree with everything you’ve written here, I just see it as a stepping stone to socialism rather than an end goal.
Fair enough. I think a lot of Liberals view socialism (like no shit real “own the means of production” socialism, rather than European capitalist-lite socialism of today) the same way as me: it sounds nice, it just doesn’t seem to work very well in practice. But hey if we can get it to work, neat. In the mean time, let’s get capitalism under control.
lol, capitalism doesn’t work either?
There is no “in the meantime”, capitalism is causing a general collapse of society and the entire biosphere of earth there is no tweaking the ship smashing into a iceberg to be beneficial for the ship, the ship already hit the iceberg.
Agreed.
This is what a lot of young leftists hand wave away
Taking in infinite immigrants and providing food shelter and healthcare for them and their lineage until the end of time ALONG WITH all of the disadvantaged citizens is not economically sustainable. You’d effectively be turning the U.S. into the world’s homeless shelter. At some point, likely sooner than later, all the raised taxes in the world on the businesses that don’t leave won’t be enough to care for everyone.
I’m all for compassion but it has to be reasoned compassion. You can’t just look at what your version of Utopia is and say that’s what we should do. Humanity is not perfect and neither will any society it builds be. But at the same time we can’t let perfect be the enemy of the good, and so we engage in these discussions.
I disagree.
Fuck yeah we would.
Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
Here’s the thing about immigrants: they start businesses. They get degrees. They make money. They pay taxes. They drive the economic engine forward. They’re not helpless fucking children, they are smart and driven and capable adults who happen to not speak your language and may have browner skin than you.
Democracy will not save us. People that won’t vote unless they fall in love can fall out of love much more easily.
Do vote, it’s low effort and it can make a marginal difference. Just make your plans assuming you party will lose and if they win they will disappoint.
Your treating this as if the same people are voting different ways. It’s usually much more along the lines of voters staying home one election and voting in another.
Edit - autocorrect got naughty!