If Joe Biden can be given credit for the actions of legislators, surely he must also take the blame. Biden’s total inability to enforce any kind of party discipline is on him and the rest of the Democratic leadership.
Speaking as a non-american, the only way to avoid burgerlands nosedive into fascism would take so much more work and would definitely involve losing the senate. To me, you have to completely remake the Supreme Court and senate, and part of that is to always attack them and their legitimacy. Every democratic spokesperson should be bring up how corrupt and unaccountable these institutions are
Like, open up criminal cases against Clarence Thomas and Alito over their corruption. Same with manchin. Every one of these ghouls have done criminal acts. Even if you don’t win the court cases (and you won’t), you’ve dragged these peoples names into the mud and will help expose the flaws in both Congress and the courts. Get a majority of people mad enough that they shut down the country through strikes and demonstrations and you’ll suddenly find the remaining judges and congresspeople a lot more amenable.
Now, you’ll have thought up a ton of reasons why this won’t work. So have I, and the major reason to me is that most of the democrats are the same kind of garbage as the republicans, along with Americans being incredibly docile except when they’re murdering each other plus a million other reasons. So fuck both parties, vote or don’t, I don’t really care, but don’t expect me to be impressed by joe Biden
Withdraw any party support from them, kick them from the party, and fund their opposition. The Democratic party can absolutely do this when they need to try and stamp out anyone to the left of the blue dogs.
West Virginia is extremely conservative and risking a seat can be quite dangerous when you are trying to govern against literal fascists
Before Shelley Morito got elected in 2015, the last time West Virginia had a republican senator was during the eisenhower administration. And if Manchin votes as a republican anyway why does it matter? Like he’s straight up come out and said he won’t vote for a Joe Biden pick for the supreme court.
West Virginia has gotten more and more conservative over time. It used to be more of a blue state. In 2020, Trump got double the votes that Biden did. Manchin is going to struggle to hold the seat if he runs again, let alone some left wing upstart without name recognition who is poorly matched to the state’s politics.
Again, if Joe Manchin is functionally a republican why does it matter if he loses? And Joe Manchin is unpopular in his own state, he’s not a person who is uniquely equipped to hold the state. Like you’re just gaslighting yourself into supporting a Republican.
Joe Manchin is conservative for a Democrat, but he is no Republican. Any replacement will be a right wing Republican that the Democratic Party has no influence over. Manchin highlights his independence from either party. A replacement would highlight their mindless opposition to any proposal by the left or Democrats.
West Virginia has gotten more and more conservative over time. It used to be more of a blue state.
WV was a blue state because unions. When Dems started attacking the largest union industries in the state, and started emphasizing identity politics over labor that was pretty much it.
yes. the democrats are so good at protecting marginalized peoples. that is clearly where their effort goes. just ask anyone trans who lives in joe biden’s america how much fun they’re having~
Never said they were successful at that. What I’m getting at is that there’s a shift in Dem rhetoric that happened about 20 years ago where the emphasis stopped being on labor, and started being on identity groups. This is very convenient for their corporate sponsorship, as silly things like worker’s rights and labor unions are not things said sponsors want to support, for obvious reasons. By comparison, something like which bathroom trans people shit in is a perfectly fine topic from the perspective of the corporate masterminds, because it doesn’t impact their cash flow.
This is the same reason why the Dems are comically bad at getting anything done - half their policies are pro-worker ones kept eternally on the back burner only to be brought out in a pre-compromised form and then compromised further on when the calls from the base get too loud, and the rest are ones where they try to keep various minority groups on the edge of existential terror by suggesting that if you don’t vote for them then you’ll be one step closer to being marched off to the death camps.
Why are Democrats giving money to “Democrats” who won’t support their agenda? Why did the DNC support Manchin and Sinema financially, but actually give money to Republicans over Progressive Democrats? You can’t be against Fascists, but still financially support them over Social Democrats…An unemotional look at the DNC’s behaviour shows that even if you got 70 Senators, the things we want would not get done. The Democrats are closer to the Republicans than any Socialist/ Communist/Anarchist in here…
you bring them into your office and say hey, you vote the way I want to or I’m going to destroy your fuckin life. direct the IRS to find any discrepancy in their taxes, direct the DOJ to find any thing they’ve ever done wrong in their life, have the NSA leak their texts, charge them with one of those bullshit charges like wire fraud. these people are absolute cowards, they don’t care about anything other than protecting their wealth - make that slightly inconvenient for them and they’ll buckle. or honestly just have the CIA kill them, who cares? the CIA is off killing civil rights leaders and foreign politicians anyway, may as well kill some of our own that are holding good things up.
lol, I bet you think killing Nazis is bad too and there’s some kind of rule that states you have to have reactionaries in your politics instead of just getting rid of them.
In freedom democracy burgerland, the average citizen has 0 influence on their elected officials decision making, and must resort to hoping they do something effectual. This is good and rational.
In authoritarian, freedom-hating China, a recall vote can be initiated against a politician at literally any time by their constituents if they feel the will of the people is not being enacted. This is horrible and bad.
Okay so address the point without latching onto the most extreme conceit they made. God forbid anything happen to a coal baron senator.
With all of the power of the executive branch, the democratic party apparatus, and the leadership of the body they are members of, you can excuse zero attempts to coerce their votes?
You live in a democracy? When is the last time you and everyone else in your workplace got together to make a decision democratically instead of that decision being made unilaterally?
What’s even worse is that the person we’re replying to is likely fully aware of how the US has been sending its military and intelligence forces all over the world for the last 70-80 years to violently crush any movement that ever so slightly opposes its hegemony, and yet they still believe that the US is somehow not “authoritarian”
At this point someone should probably dig up that research paper that shows that what the US public wants has no influence on what is actually carried out by the US state.
bud, you could literally rub their noses in the most solid evidence and they won’t accept it in the same way you can drag a mule to water but you can’t make the jackass drink
You live in the US which has the world’s largest prison population by both total numbers and percent of the population. Is this the non-authoritarian democracy you’re talking about here? We have so many people in a cycle of poverty, bad health, and prison because we all got together and decided that this is how we want to allocate resources? Billionaires, private prisons, private healthcare, unaffordable housing, and child poverty?
Democracy is when no political party dominates, and the more power doesn’t consolidate around a very justifiably popular party the more democratic it is.
If the democrats started doing good things the last time they had concrete control over all three branches and jumped to something like 80 percent popularity and got 80 percent of the vote, that would be undemocratic. Just like how the CPC has an above 90 percent approval rate according to international observers and holds almost all political offices in China.
During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum. parenti
If they ban other parties, they’re a one-party state. If they don’t ban other parties, actually yes they do and it’s all a secret scheme to convince us they’re not a one-party state.
We had a president literally try to overturn an election in his favor and the Senate still failed to convict him. 43 Republicans had their lives put in danger by his actions but still voted him not guilty. If that’s not enough to remove a president from office then what makes you think this would?
Because they voted that way for tribal reasons. They refused to hold one of their own accountable. Democrats have before and will again. We don’t cover for someone’s crimes just because they belong to the right party.
We don’t cover for someone’s crimes just because they belong to the right party.
lmao remind me again the last time a president was tried for war crimes? Obama literally bombed hospitals and the Dems still haven’t done a damn thing about it.
Way to miss the point about Obama acknowledging the incident and no one finding any evidence that he deliberately ordered the hospital to be bombed. War crimes are deliberate. Better if we’re not bombing anyone at all, but his actions didn’t rise to the level of criminality which is why even Republicans didn’t try to get him on that. It’s not like they weren’t looking for an excuse to impeach him and put him on trial. They tried really hard with Benghazi, and still couldn’t manage it.
So if somebody kicks your door in and shoots you in the head then gives your family $50 that’s all good as long as the murderer didn’t have a handwritten note saying “I know this is an extra judicial killing and don’t care” in his jacket?
Actually political parties can and should enforce political discipline on their members, and there should be reprisals for going against the party and its leadership.
But the reality is, letting Manchin trash this legislation is probably more the plan than an opposition to it
If they can’t control him then they’ve already functionally lost a seat (unless of course, they actually like having him block legislation they don’t actually want to pass)
Parties exert control on their members in this country, they always have, and generally not through violence or torture. Usually its through taking away party support from them and their personal agenda. It could be attacking political pork to West Virginia, close military or other government facilities there, and support challengers/kick him out of the party so he can’t run on their ticket. It could possibly include more strong-arm tactics, not violence, not even anything necessarily illegal, that’s speculative but possible.
What you’re asking people to explain, is something that is the norm. You’re the one actually making an outrageous claim of how do we expect a political party to control and discipline its members. And pretending that the Democratic Party or the President just have no power in this situation is ludicrous
I don’t think elections hold a lot of promise of fixing anything. I think Manchin and Sinema are exactly where their party wants them. I don’t think that this legislation failing is something that the Biden Admin or the DNC are against.
I think they’re happy about it, and thats why there’s no discipline exerted on either of them. That’s what i meant by you making an extraordinary claim about party discipline. Theres no party discilple or reprisals because the party doesn’t care about this legislation. They like having these scapegoats. The Democratic Party leadership does not share your view, that these people shouldn’t be there. That’s why elections in this system will not fix it
Guy dude pal it was already pointed out to you that he was the cause/excuse for the bill being watered down AND that the bil did not need his vote. Like it wasn’t even close to needing his vote. It passed the senate with double digit votes.
You were also already given those examples of what the party could do.
You’re doing a little thing called lying, and it’s not very nice.
I think they're supposed to argue against their democratic/republican nominations in their states or something for future elections, but I honestly could be wrong because It's not something I often think about. Just that there has to be some sort of repercussion for consistently voting against your party....
I’m gonna put on my political scientist hat, and point out that almost every political party on this planet enforces internal discipline in a multitilude of ways, a handful of which have been mentioned in this discussion thread already.
The idea that parties are these big tents where you can’t possibly enforce any kind of internal discipline is both a uniquely America-brained take, and also not entirely true.
Like, there are literally people called “Party Whips” who’s job it is to pressure the party members vote along party lines.
He’d be using republican money for re-election instead of taking money from potential progressive politicians before getting elected and voting against the dems entire platform.
I guess it’s good that Biden didn’t really try to get leverage on manchin then. Its good that Biden saw all the damage manchin was doing and said “well I guess I gotta give up now”
People who really care will try everything even if it might not work. Biden didn’t try shit because he doesn’t care
So Democrats should turn into Republicans. Yup, that’ll really fix the problem! Clearly I was mistaken that the goal here was good governance instead of seizing and holding power.
Good governance is when you let your country fall apart because you’re too scared of getting your hands dirty to reign in rogue senators who are putting your country’s population at risk of starvation
Having different ideas of what constitutes being a good public servant and how to do the job doesn’t make them the enemy. Neither is following the rule of law. We can agree that more needs to be done and Biden’s not doing everything right, but not that he’s the bad guy because he’s not doing everything we want him to do.
The rule of law is a dumb concept and should be ignored. The laws we are talking about were written by monsters and no one with a soul should respect them
Republicans get things done and Democrats don’t. I don’t want dems to pick up Republican social ideals but I do want them to pick up Republican political strategies that actually produce results. Why do you want the party of the “good guys” to be so feckless? Isn’t it a HUGE problem when the “good guys” are weak and the bad guys are strong?
I don't think that would work because republicans are bankrolled by billionaires who gain by Republican governance. Good democratic governance wouldn't be making anyone bank so there is no reason billionaires would fund a massive propaganda network to achieve that goal.
you can tell how little attention Democratic Party apologists like this pay attention to the Democrats, because they never seem to see any of the absolutely dirty tricks they pull against popular progressives to enforce discipline, that are somehow never ever deployed against these sineating right-wing assholes like Sinema and Manchin.
like a proper fool who has no idea of what is going on and yet is dead convinced of his own…let’s call it “reasons”
In order to hit the rule of three you included “you still have your opinion even after I called someone else stupid” for your reasons why someone’s comment was stupid.
The Biden administration has overseen the sharpest rise in child poverty in America in decades. It’s the responsibility of the governing party to figure out how to get results, not how to take a feels-good position.
There’s absolutely nothing the democrats could have to prevent this. It just wasn’t possible. If they had dared to try instead of talking about the importance of a strong republican party and the importance of compromise the parliamentarian would have immediately impeached Biden.
Make sure you vote blue no matter who. They’ll definitely do something next time football-lucy
Are you sure? I’m pretty sure if they roll a 4 or greater they get to be the president, during which time they may impeach the former president and wear their clothes.
The parliamentarian doesn’t have the authority to do fucking anything its some unelected beurocrat nobody had ever heard of until liberals needed a fresh excuse to not do anything.
Not just them, their whole family. There are people in Wales and Scotland that were bullied at school because their dad’s crossed a picket line. It’s something that’ll almost literally define their lives in that area or country.
Yeah, the windows would open. But, honestly some days were gross. But US school would end by mid June and start in September so there’s only a few hot days to worry about, you might hit over 80F /27c a few times at most.
I can’t see anywhere which would explain why the school closed. It’s possible that it doesn’t have central air. It could also be an efficiency thing; maybe the AC can’t vent out the heat fast enough to cool down the building when it’s that warm? My house is actually like that when it hits around 105° outside.
The smart ass reply is they close down when it’s hot for the same reason Texas closes down when it’s only 30° and it barely snows 😅
Joe Mansion and Christian Cinema are just this administration’s Joe Liberalman. Aw beans, we wanted to do a good thing, but this one guy is gumming up the works! If only there was something we could do…
… like kick him off his committees. Pull his funding. Pull his endorsements. Revoke his party membership. Revoke federal contracts and close military bases in his state. Anything. Literally just change the rules! The Senate can do that!
And that’s just moral, ethical, rules-and-order-and-norms stuff they could do. There’s plenty of evil (but perfectly legal) shit the President can do. Pull Mansion or Sinema into the back of The Beast, and show them some live footage of a predator drone flying over their houses. Remember, Obama established that you can drone strike US citizens if you’re the President!
Anything. Literally just change the rules! The Senate can do that!
The Senate can do that with a simple majority of votes. But when they need Manchin and Sinema to achieve that majority and neither of them are interested in helpful changes like fixing the filibuster, no. No they can’t do that.
so you’re saying they can’t get anything done, because they follow special, unwritten rules against getting things done. because getting a good thing done is bad.
another ringing endorsement to vote for the Democrats.
No. I’m saying that they can’t get things done until we do our part. We have to give them a majority that can make people like Manchin irrelevant. It’s our fault that things are like this, not theirs. Operating within the rules and not pursuing their lust for power is just one of the reasons we ought to be helping them attain that majority.
There’s plenty of blame to go around. The current political climate and the restrictions they’re operating under is not something that can reasonably be blamed on the White House or the current Senate Democrats.
Right, it’s my fault the planet is dying because I personally failed to recycle my .0000000001% of plastic waste that I didn’t ask to have produced
Everything would be fine if people like me just didn’t litter, no more pacific garbage patch!
Those starving children in Africa are only hungry because I’m neglecting my personal responsibility to donate to charities!
This historical moment didn’t arise from nowhere. It’s basically a straight fucking line for the last 90 years, the process is this way on purpose, the democrats are this way on purpose
Operating within the rules and not pursuing their lust for power is just one of the reasons we ought to be helping them attain that majority.
Why would I miss a day of work to vote for someone who is going to handicap themselves instead of using the tools at their disposal?
If dems kicked Mansion and Sinema off all committees, cut all discretionary funds flowing into the state, and Biden’s AG indicted Manchin/his family for corruption and Sinema for campaign finance violations, then I could believe they genuinely wanted to pass the policies these people are blocking.
Instead the dem’s actions are no different than if they opposed these policies.
Operating within the rules and not pursuing their lust for power is just one of the reasons we ought to be helping them attain that majority
So you’re saying we should support the democrats because when they get into power they won’t try to get any the good things they want done done unlike the republicans who will happily stoop however low they can to get all the bad things they want done
What good legislation? The Crime bill? Clinton’s Welfare Reform? The Telecom deregulation? Repeal of Glass-Stegal? The resolution to invade Iraq? The Patriot Act? The bill Biden backed to keep people from discharging student loans through bankruptcy? Watered down ACA with no public option?
They never codified Roe. They never codified Ogerfell. They never did anything about Citizens United.
Edit: Wall Street bailouts in 08? Forcing people back to work during Covid? Not sending people the $2,000 they promised? That bill crushing the Railroad strike?
They’re authoritarians whenever a minority asks them to stop killing them but when it comes to opposing fascism that’s when they slap the handcuffs on themselves and insist them doing nothing is the morally superior choice.
Unless there’s a contingent of people who would actually support the dems if they adopted the strategy of “literally doing anything at all to oppose fascism”
Oh no, we don’t want it to look like we’re retaliating against fascists
The worst is that people (in this very thread) are blaming the Democratic party. I’m sure most of them are posting in bad faith, but I know there are people who think this way. There’s an entire party actively working to undermine our democracy, but it’s those “shitty Democrats” that suck for making this happen.
I think the fundamental disconnect here is that there is one political party dedicated to destroying the government and installing themselves as permanent oligarchs, and one party who doesn't agree with them but at the same time treats the other party with congeniality and does little to oppose them. People want a party willing to fight the fascists, but democrats will fight tooth and nail to not do that, harder than they are willing to fight the republicans.
It took me far too many braincells to realize that this headline means "being mean to scabs is effective" and not "being mean to scabs is, itself, doing work."
As a non American, viewing this from the outside. Let me say this.
These guys are ridiculous please don’t vote for them. Not only do they not believe in climate change, which is insane given how much of the planet is currently ablaze, but they don’t even understand what chat GPT is. So they are corrupt and stupid.
"Think of the kids!" They scream as they actively support legislation that will (and almost certainly has) lead to the suicide of many young Louisianans
“they market these bills as bills to save children. Now, I actually save children and I know what it means to save a child. I know what it means to support a child and support our own children. None of these bills have anything to do with saving children”
Maher doesn’t even need to open his mouth for you to know what a smug bitch he is. But for the life of me I can’t figure out what he is feeling smug about.
I thought his smugness worked… for a while. He’s been right on a great many things across his career, and was able to frame his scathing critiques in fairly unique, clever ways. (and/or his writers were) Indeed, at one time I admired his ability to look at things from pretty daring angles, even if he was sometimes way off.
Problem is, he’s not the same anymore. Sort of like Joe Rogan, who at least started out with honest, interesting, amusing takes in a sort of ‘college student+’ kind of way. But something seems to have happened to these guys across the years. Not just the wealth, but the growing insulation from reality and… the normalisation of right-wing extremism. Something like that, anyway.
Still, I can’t just forget that Maher was killing it for plenty of years, there, even if he did rub people the wrong way.
You hit it on the nose. He had, and to some extent still has, a whiplash in his dialogue but man has he really gone off the deep end in the last couple of years. When he started sounding like some soap box winey resident from the villages blaming millennials for random shit that’s when I started to tune him out. His interview with Musk was boarder line creepy. Kind of like the age of the women he dates.
What about John Cornyn, Kevin Cramer, Deb Fischer, Cindy Hyde-Smith, James Lankford, Jim Risch, Roger Wicker, and all the other Republicans?
Yes, Manchin voted with them instead of with the Democrats, but ultimately it was almost entirely Republicans who voted to end the child tax credit. I can’t see any reason why he deserves more blame than them.
We expect them to vote like assholes because they caucus with assholes. Manchin is allegedly supposed to be a Democrat and work with Democrats in Congress, but he seems to have more in common with Republicans. The only reason Democrats defend him at this point is because of their razor-thin majority in the Senate. If he switched parties or otherwise stopped caucusing with them, Republicans would take the majority and gain further control over our government. And that never ends well.
You should expect the senators from West Virginia to vote republican. West Virginia is definitely red at this point. You have a better chance of getting a Democrat to replace Susan Collins or maybe even Ted Cruz than having any other “Democrat” from West Virginia.
We get that. The complaint here is that while the far-right will fuck us over for their corporate masters, they’re generally honest about that. But Manchin’s sabotage comes from within the Democratic party. He helps the Democrats obtain technical majority in the Senate, then blocks their agenda so Republicans and trolls can say “see? Democrats are just as bad! They’re not interested in helping Americans either!”
And since the average voter isn’t following legislation and how Republicans have weaponized obstruction, they hear that and assume it must be true. All because Manchin and Sinema don’t have a problem with Republican obstruction.
You’re overthinking it. Manchin votes with Biden nearly 88% of the time. A full 20% more than the nearest Republican. The next lowest 90% is Bernie Sanders.
You’re overthinking it. Manchin votes with Biden nearly 88% of the time.
You’re ignoring that things usually only come to the floor for a vote when we think we have Manchin on board. This statistic is meaningless and you know it. Stop being dishonest on behalf of the guy who cast the deciding vote to double child poverty for you.
Call him out for ever bill he should support that he doesn’t. That’s not my point at all. My point is he’s not a Republican with a D next to his name. He’s measurably better than the best Republican. When he leaves the seat will go from 87% agreed to under 40% no matter what.
People have these naive ideas that they are going to replace him with a progressive.
We should stop propping him up and expend the resources to elect a better candidate in another state. You know, instead of constantly defending him his seat.
I’ve run into the rhetoric or Reddit for years to primary him. I think a few members of congress have said the same.
Yes, flip seats in other states that are flipp able. That’s the point. Trump won West Virginia by 39 points in 2020. The second highest marching of victory, and somehow we have a Senator who votes for Democrats/Biden 20% more than any other Republican from that state. Under that context why would you criticize him? You’re being handed unearned wins basically.
What in the hell are you talking about? Lemmy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There’s ample criticism for Manchin here, and my point couldn’t be more simple.
The statistic isn’t meaningless at all. Is there someone that could win that seat that would have voted for this bill? No. Wtf is the point?
Is there someone that could win that seat that would have voted for this bill?
I’ve already addressed this point. Since you want to argue against someone who wants to primary Manchin, find someone who holds that view to argue against.
Don’t keep pretending I hold a view you’ve practiced arguing against just because you don’t know how to counter anything else.
I mean, the article’s about how Manchin once again voted to fuck over poor people, and his acolytes are yet again like “Don’t blame Manchin for doing what we wanted him to! Blame Republicans!”
He betrayed the poor and his party. He’s right to catch blame for being the deciding vote here. No matter how much his supporters want to draw attention away from how he did what they wanted him to do.
Nobody is saying he doesn’t deserve any blame. Are you people here incapable of grasping nuance? Manchin doesn’t have any fucking “acolytes”, just people who are able to understand basic math.
If we didn’t have 50 Republican senators, his one vote would not matter. They’re constantly getting a pass so people who claim to be on the left can focus on the ONE DEMOCRAT that voted with those 50 Republicans, while ignoring the fact that these votes are passing with 51 votes, not 1.
It's less that he's bought and more that he's hoping to be bought. He's seeking donations from other people with a vested interest in denying human made climate change. He's not bought, he's for sale.
motherjones.com
Top