The frightening part here is that one party rule rarely lasts, and most voters won’t be paying attention to the truly sick and twisted views of these people. So eventually, when the economy tanks or there’s some scandal, voters will want change and the fascists will be waiting in the wings for their moment.
Supporting 5% of their legislation is better than his replacement supporting 0%. The solution is not to replace manchin but to reduce his importance by broadening the majority.
By a Republican who would be easily elected over any Democrat other than Manchin. Trump won WV In 2016 by a wider margin than any other state.
Only reason Manchin gets elected there is because he’s practically a Republican. He votes like shit but he’s still far better than the alternative. We need more progressive senators in winable states.
It’s overstated. He only votes against the Democrats 3% less than Bernie Sanders (87% to 90%). He votes with them 20% more than the nearest Republican.
Very possibly true, not all votes are weighted the same. I’d have to look further into it, but I know Bernie has done the same in the past where he wanted something better that had no traction. I can recall something healthcare related a few years back, but he may have still voted for it in the end. This also doesn’t take into consideration bills that never make it to vote.
Those stats are worthless when they don't count all the bills that died without getting a vote because he wouldn't support them. Put those in the voted against Biden collumn and suddenly the stats look way worse.
Yes. Good. Tear your own party apart. Without the Republican menace to worry about, a new progressive party can arise to challenge the Democrats and yank the Overton window back where it belongs.
In early June, roughly 250 Michiganders filed into a windowless banquet hall for the Macomb County GOP’s annual Lincoln Dinner. The dining tables were decorated with white tablecloths, tiny American flags, and famous Lincoln quotes, while the silent auction display off to the side featured Trump Wine, a cardboard cutout of Donald and Melania, and 30 mm rounds the size of a baby’s torso that had “Jesus is Lord!” etched into the shells.
I really find that last bit horrifying. Jebus is lord, child.
Remember when an enthusiastic scream ended a presidential campaign? Remember when “binders full of women” was a huge gaffe? Remember when misspelling a common word was indicative of idiocy not fit for the Oval Offive?
As someone 10 years older than you, let me tell you: the Bill Clinton campaign was amazing. Like, completely forget whatever you think you know about him being a womanizer for a moment...
Clinton went onto a late night talk show geared to black audiences (The Arsenio Hall Show) and played jazz saxophone live like Duke Silver. Clinton, in the typical politician suit, would get on stage and rip a blue streak of reedy sex in front of the house band. In the '90s, everyone jokingly called him the first black president.
At a town hall against George Bush Sr., a black woman asked a question how national debt impacted each of them individually. GB fumbled in his response, but Clinton deftly jumped into show he wasn't out of touch. Collective memory repaints this moment as Clinton with his steely blue eyes stepping forward and saying, "I feel your pain," in a lilting cadence and bit his lip empathizingly. It was noteworthy that a politician was saying "I see you, I hear you" at this kind of event.
And myself being a child in the '90s, Clinton talked to young people about the role they play in democracy and the future of America in a way that had me believing that I could vote for him at the age of 10. Every other politician up to then had talked about children like they weren't in the same room watching the same news as their parents. After becoming president, Clinton went onto Nickelodeon and did a town hall with preteens and teens about smoking that walked that line between getting lectured at and being invested in. It was hosted by a Nickelodeon journalist named Linda Ellerbee who had a show that presented the news to kids for 25 years. Clinton's directed messaging to children probably came from his own experience of having met JFK when he was in his teens as part of a leadership program he was selected for. Shaking JFK's hand and getting to talk with him has been described as the moment young William Jefferson Clinton knew he would one day run for president.
I'm sad we haven't had a politician like this in a terribly long time. I will say though that from a couple of videos I've seen, Obama has been great with children and Biden really talks to kids in ways that show that they will one day be adults. I've never seen them just use kids as political props in a kiss the baby and smile for the photo, then hand over the kid back to the parent like the kid is plutonium.
I will add here that when I first wrote this up and then went to go find source links, it stood out to me how much of my memories were inaccurate compared to the videos I found. I am going to chalk part of this up to the Mandela Effect, but also part of it to remembering the impact these moments had on me and the way these moments were played up in the immediate retelling in conversations at the dining table and from the media (such as SNL who parodied Clinton for well over 10 years). It's weird to think that my memories are wrong, but I think it speaks more to the legendary status of Clinton before his scandals broke out and he was impeached.
Remember when puking in a foreign delegates lap was a huge gaffe and seriously hurt a presidential reelection campaign? Now people are seriously considering testing the theory that someone can be president while in federal prison.
there's also nothing saying that a (state) prison has to let their inmate go. or have internet access. or be allowed to, you know, run a government from their cell. There are some things saying that if the president is incapable, the vice president steps up.
it's a big unknown grayzone, but the party of State's Rights will be in a very amusing position if this should become a thing. (I doubt it will. he lost in 2020, and his support has only diminished.)
As a Liberal I would like to thank Joe Manchin for absorbing all the anger that would be directed at the entire democratic party like a tortured idol from a Dark Souls game.
Thank you Democrats for diffusing public anger the way any adults in the room would, and for protecting my investments in 14,000 empty single family homes in upstate New York.
Please consider my proposal for Green solar powered benches that electrify after 10pm to prevent homeless people from sleeping on them. This would increase our property values even further. We truly are Better Together™
Does anyone have the link to the local midterm elections in some red state where like 4 conservatives just accuse each other of being in the deep state for 5 minutes during a debate?
Maybe Trump was not bought. But he had his own business interests - just think of the fortunes he made by making the Secret Service stay in his hotels - and, quite likely, he was and still is being owned by Putin.
The American public seems to have emerged from the initial jolt of the pandemic with a newfound clarity familiar to survivors of catastrophes. Many people experienced an evaporation of the things that lent their lives the illusion of stability. Jobs disappeared and the social safety net’s holes loomed large. For scores of working people, it was—though they might not use this term—a radicalizing experience. Millions suddenly confronted the fact that if we didn’t protect ourselves, nobody else would. “I don’t really know if any amount of money would make working in this environment and being exposed to this level of risk feel worth it,” one grocery worker said early in the pandemic. For “essential” workers, it became clear that the work and the risk were a package deal.
This realization supercharged public interest in organized labor, bolstering a surge of support for union activity, which had already been growing slowly since the Great Recession in 2009. Polls show that public approval of labor unions is now at its highest point since 1965. This is unsurprising. Since the start of the Reagan era, wages for average workers have stagnated, astounding wealth has flowed to a tiny percentage of society, and the resulting rise in economic inequality has destabilized our political landscape. When this slow but steady erosion of the American Dream met the shock of Covid, it became all but impossible to avoid the conclusion that “Organize or Die” could be a literal slogan.
In 2020, we saw the launch of the (ultimately unsuccessful) union drive at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama—at that point the most serious organizing effort against the Bezos empire. The addition of Covid’s burden to the weight of algorithmically driven warehouse work was the tipping point for fed-up workers unwilling to risk their lives for $15.50 an hour. That effort was followed in 2021 by a series of victories: a successful union vote at the Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, the launch of the still-growing Starbucks union organizing campaign, and a mini-wave of strikes dubbed “Striketober.” The drumbeat grew louder in 2023, with major strikes in Hollywood and at the Big Three automakers. In September, Joe Biden spoke at a picket line in support of United Auto Workers, the first sitting president in history to do so. It was clear that something was happening.
But what, exactly? The long-overdue return of unions to the spotlight is not the sea change that it can appear to be. In the middle of the 20th century, when American unions were at peak membership, about one in three workers was in a union. By 1980, the number had fallen to one in five, and by 2005, one in eight. This unrelenting decline in union density—the percentage of workers who are members—is the biggest problem facing organized labor. And since strong unions tend to improve wages and conditions even for nonunion employees, and make politics more worker-friendly, low union density is a problem for the entire working class and, more broadly, anyone with a job. Each success is meaningful to individual workers. But the wins do not add up to a transformative movement unless they can reverse decades of decline—which has not yet happened.
In 2022, even as the popularity of unions hit a generational high, union density fell to 10.1 percent, the lowest on record. The inability to channel all this excitement, during the most pro-union administration of most voters’ lifetimes, into an economy wide barrage of large-scale organizing drives, should put a lump in the throat of anyone who cares about the class war. The traditional analysis of union decline cites two main causes. The first is the devastating effects of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act—which restricted how unions could strike; outlawed “closed shops”; and enabled states to pass “right to work” laws, which under the guise of worker freedom allow a member of a unionized workplace to opt out of paying fees. The second cause is corporate America’s decades-long project to perfect its union-busting tactics.
But you can’t just chalk up organized labor’s woes to the old saws of union-busting businesses and hostile laws. They also reflect the atrophied state of labor’s institutions, a lack of adequate organizing infrastructure and budgets, and, in many cases, an attitude of resignation that decades of decline inflicted on some union leaders who should, right now, be rushing to capitalize on the favorable conditions.
just fyi, its not the whole body. there is more. i don’t want to break any rules or upset the publisher by posting the whole article. they need the traffic too
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