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.