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The human suffering is the whole point
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Mar 22, 2022 23:43
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Solkanar512 posted:Again, this is based on what? You keep claiming to know more than the unions and activists on the ground, why can't you tell us all what you know that they do not? If they're so wise that they're beyond critique by the posting hoi polloi, why did they lose How are u posted:I'm more of a mind that politics is about getting things done. If you're grandstanding to the point that you alienate all of your allies while also failing to accomplish your objective I don't think you're doing it right. If they were really trying to get things done, they should have really gotten the "not losing to Youngkin" thing done because that was a big bottleneck for getting other things done
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Mar 23, 2022 21:18
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Kalit posted:It kind of sucks that McAuliffe changed stance on the right to work repeal might have been a big reason of why he lost, doesn’t it? Especially when more than 2/3rd of the state supports the right to work law. Considering his "changed stance" amounted to saying "maybe if it was on my desk but this bill will never pass the legislature and can't even get out of committee, let's talk about something else" I think it's pretty reasonable to say no, it was not a big reason
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Mar 23, 2022 22:05
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FlamingLiberal posted:I swear to god, no one cares about the deficit. Republicans stopped caring about it when Bush was president. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Biden is living in the past that way. If it wasn't going to harm so many people, it would be legitimately funny how thoroughly Joe Manchin has owned the Biden administration relative to the early spin about what a good soldier he secretly was for the party and how he was just tricking the Cletuses and Brandines back in the holler with performative opposition
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Mar 28, 2022 02:46
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Clyburn's presumably going to run out of time in the seat in the not-too-distant future anyway but it would be extremely funny if South Carolina lost its spot after what a good soldier he was in 2020
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Mar 29, 2022 07:01
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Joe Biden himself accepted a two hundred thousand dollar personal check to help elect a PA Republican and Democrat voters didn't give a single gently caress. They definitely won't turn on him over Hunter's foreign misadventures in their most favorite non-US country The real story to me here is how fast and hard the US media and social platforms clamped down on the initial reporting. Like you couldn't even link to the story in private messages on those platforms and Twitter gave the NY Post official account a two week probe... and the story ended up being real lol. It was pretty obvious at the time given that the "denials" were entirely rhetorical innuendo meant to suggest that it could be perfidious Russian disinfoski but nobody was actually willing to say it outright on the record Pretty funny too when you compare it to the contemporary Russian Bounties story which ended up being an actual disinfo campaign by US intelligence elements against its own citizens, credulously reported on by the same media with the actual evidence apparently being some spook just saying "dude trust me" efb by more thoughtful posts lol
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Mar 31, 2022 07:26
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Jaxyon posted:I assure you, as someone who's wasted way too much time yelling at Trump voters on social media, that you could have linked those stories in public and in DM Oh word? https://twitter.com/jack/status/1316528193621327876
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Mar 31, 2022 09:26
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Jaxyon posted:I dont use twitter. I do use FB which I absolutely had people linking it at me I see it was merely "reduced distribution" in the news feed algorithm https://twitter.com/andymstone/status/1316395902479872000
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Mar 31, 2022 10:07
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Kalit posted:You should probably be more precise with your language if you don't want to be corrected. It just seemed like you didn't realize that Biden had, in fact, actually done something about some student loans. It's actually a lot more honest and accurate to consider forgiving ~.026% of the collective student debt as being equivalent to nothing than it is to frame it in a way that implies it's meaningful action like you're doing here
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Apr 1, 2022 03:20
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Personally I think the world we're living in right now is one in which they can and will restart student loan payments this year. It's something the Biden administration actively wants to do and I think they'll probably find an opening. Media talking heads will rationalize it, and I suspect many people who otherwise say differently now will likely accept those excuses
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Apr 1, 2022 07:28
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I guess I just don't see how you can realistically make the argument that "oh they're not going to gently caress us over on this, it would be electoral suicide" like that means something. It's electoral suicide to not enact voting rights protection and they're not doing that, and that's something that directly affects their ability to remain in office, much less something upstream that they can talk themselves out of, and they're still not going to do poo poo about thatGhost Leviathan posted:Almost certainly going to be something about making those lazy spoiled millennials get off their asses and get back to work for those struggling small business owners. I'm sure there'll be some of that but I think the rationale is way more likely to be that, actually, it's really electorally smart to restart student loan payments because if you do a superficial read of polls X/Y/Z, you'll find that there's a major voting bloc waiting out there who will rise up and punish the Democrats if they do anything useful about student debt because apparently that's some people's #1 issue(it's absolutely not lmao). Posters in previous iterations of this thread were already starting to push that line when it looked like the pause was going to expire in February and I expect that's what'll get dusted off to excuse it when they pull the trigger, be it in May or sometime later It collapses pretty quickly if you think about it for a minute, but the point of the rationale is so you don't have to think about it, you can simply repeat it as you solemnly shake your drat head
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Apr 1, 2022 11:41
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BiggerBoat posted:This is the sort of thing I'm speaking to when I discount the measures by which the economy is booming. This behavior by Democrats is a lot easier to understand if you view it as axiomatic rather than a considered response. The data itself is orthogonal because it will always be assumed to be the best that could have reasonably been done under the circumstances and anything more is unicorn fantasy, with their only acknowledged failing being their struggles in making the hoi polloi aware of how great things are. This both insulates them from ever having to reflect on the insufficiency of their policies and the failings of their governing ideology, while simultaneously providing evergreen justification for the existence of the sprawling consultancy apparatus that keeps their useless failkids employed as both brainstormers for the rosy data as well as being theoretical prole whisperers
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Apr 3, 2022 22:30
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Killer robot posted:So it's of similar age to the phrase "cultural marxism," huh? No and it's actually real lovely to equate speculation about the workings of political theatre to antisemitic smears invented by neo-Nazis It is very odd to me to see posters who unironically thought the Manchin Cycle was real get so het up about rotating villains, I wonder what the difference is How are u posted:We definitely, unequivocally would have passed BBBA last year if we had won the 2020 Senate races in Maine, North Carolina, plus one other. Actually we wouldn't have
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Apr 5, 2022 23:39
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Main Paineframe posted:If that's the case, then why even bother following politics news at all? Why are you spending your days reading discussions about what the Democratic legislature is doing? You're already convinced you know the outcome of any potentially-progressive bill, to the point of constructing a worldview in which that outcome is the only possible outcome, regardless of conditions. Why bother following the actual bills, their actual course through the Senate, or the actual votes? This post doesn't seem to have much of a point beyond implying that other posters can either leave or be definitionally insincere. Why is a belief in the good intentions of the Democrats a requirement to participate in a discussion about political news? Like would you tell someone who believes all the dinosaurs are extinct that they cannot logically discuss dinosaurs unless they believe dinosaurs are actually still alive out there? That's dumb It is a discussion forum, not a wishcasting forum
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Apr 6, 2022 00:35
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Sarcastr0 posted:This is starting to look a lot like fasc them before they fasc you... You don't appear to know what fascism means. Perhaps you should read up on it some more before weighing in
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Apr 13, 2022 18:37
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FLIPADELPHIA posted:Jayapal not endorsing Nina Turner has hit me pretty hard in terms of overall faith in electoralism as a solution to our problems. Turner isn't some radical- she advocates for 99% of the things that Jayapal and the progressive caucus run on. This is the correct conclusion but you really should have put this together last year with her BBB fiasco
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Apr 14, 2022 20:23
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:Jayapal and Khanna are supposedly very progressive, but I do not understand why someone would conclude that. They're obvious careerists, OP
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Apr 14, 2022 20:30
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Personally I feel like arguing over the theoretical political philosophies of Americans as broad groups and implicitly assuming that these collective philosophies are a driver of change is mainly just a way to reify the questionable idea that the US has a responsive democracy To me it seems like, to the extent that coherent collective ideologies can be observed, they are primarily trailing indicators of the exercise of power rather than leading indicators
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Apr 15, 2022 21:30
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:I'm totally not surprised you have a final solution planned for those you deem fascist. I get that you're desperate to own the leftists but this is absolutely vile, especially from someone who capes for a political system and political party that has helped build and operate an actual concentration camp system in real life. Jesus Christ
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Apr 16, 2022 19:40
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:I'm not the one that said "all fascists should be put in jail for life or killed" followed by the idea that all conservatives and liberals are fascists. I was just following the logical conclusion of the argument. He even called it a "permanent solution". Saying "permanent solution" in the context of explicit discussion of what constitutes a half-measure vs a full measure in antifascist strategy isn't remotely the same thing as the Nazi program that exterminated millions of Jewish people, you vile piece of poo poo. You knew exactly what you were doing. gently caress off. You're human garbage (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Apr 16, 2022 22:00
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People are more than welcome to find hypocrisy personally rankling, but anybody trying to make political hay out of it is making a mistake. Cawthorn's anti-trans actions should be opposed because they're wrong, not because of whatever's going on in his head. His personal sincerity is orthogonal to the whole thing, and coming at it from that direction when attempting political analysis opens the door to the contraposition that, had he not been a hypocrite, his positions would be more defensible. JMO
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Apr 24, 2022 21:56
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I suspect Manchin's getting good reactions because he's clowned his enemies over and over during the last year to the point even the president has to ask his permission to do anything, and people like dudes who look strong
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Apr 26, 2022 06:54
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I'll be very surprised if Biden actually does anything meaningful about student debt. It looks like a pure trial balloon to me and all the talking heads are coming out of the woodwork to pop it by doing the same thing a few posters here are doing, ie inventing some imaginary constituent bloc who really hates it while disregarding the actual extant constituent bloc that actively wants it. It's important systemically for this song-and-dance to happen because it applies a filter of electoral behavior to the outcome, when the real problem is that wide-scale debt cancellation would directly contradict baseline neoliberal ideology
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Apr 27, 2022 21:33
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Xombie posted:If Biden was going to just do nothing about student debt he'd be committing to doing nothing right now by restarting loan payments. Kicking the can to right before midterms has made him pot-committed to some level of action. His chief of staff has publicly said as much. I'll believe it when I see it
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Apr 27, 2022 21:40
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Xombie posted:I mean, that's fine. Because he'd have to do it in a few months. It's not like this is a prediction with an infinite shelf life. Like I mean I hope you're right because it would alleviate a lot of suffering for people, but we've also seen this administration back itself into corners before and just say "whoops! well anyway" so I don't see that threat as providing more pressure than the forces that are arraying against it. Maybe it will this time but I am deeply skeptical
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Apr 27, 2022 22:47
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Jaxyon posted:I mean, I'll take student loan forgiveness but LOL if that's Biden's signature achievement going into the midterms. I mean right now his signature achievement is a highway bill so this would be a pretty big upgrade
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Apr 28, 2022 00:38
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Black borrowers do borrow more on average for undergrad, but only 20% of student loans are held by black borrowers. "only" Black people are 13% of the overall population lol
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Apr 28, 2022 02:49
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Kalit posted:Do y'all just not care much about us finally getting out of Afghanistan after 20 years? It was already in the pipeline before he was elected(whether you believe Trump would have followed through or not) and he followed up by immediately drone striking a family to look tough and then stole a massive amount of money from the country
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Apr 28, 2022 04:46
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Kalit posted:So... do you have to approve of everything surrounding an achievement for you to count that as a signature achievement? As a reminder, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, that you mentioned as his signature achievement, was created/passed only after they torpedoed all of the stuff that was supposed to be in BBB. I like to consider the context of things and I do consider the highway bill a joke overall because it came in the context of a much more significant failure A fairly obvious miscommunication here though is "signature achievement" as I understood it by Jaxyon(and he's welcome to correct me if I'm wrong) is what his administration is going to point to for the midterms. He's not going to point to Afghanistan withdrawal in 2022 and it won't be a feature of his 2024 campaign because they don't actually want people to remember this happened
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Apr 28, 2022 05:03
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Kalit posted:Fair enough for probably not campaigning on it for the midterms. I don't think you can separate that from the responsible actors themselves claiming it as their signature achievement, though. Obama touts it himself and the party as a whole has embraced it after Obama was out of office--which can be for a whole bunch of potential reasons beyond simple pride(lack of any competing achievements in his second term, or Republican attacks on it during the Trump presidency, or as a bulwark against Medicare For All in the 2020 primary, etc). I don't think the same will be true of Biden, in large part because the actual execution of the withdrawal was viewed as an embarrassing disaster Rochallor posted:For a few weeks I would have (sadly) ranked Biden as the best president of my lifetime simply for finally ending the loving war, but the casual indifference to human life and the active greed he displayed in pulling out basically evens it out to nothing. He deserves about as much credit as Trump does for Afghanistan. The majority of the responsibility for it goes to the Taliban(and before anybody starts, this is not a moral judgment) for having consolidated power over the whole country outside the cities, which they also could have taken had they really wanted to
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Apr 28, 2022 05:48
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Kalit posted:I'm confused, why do you think it's viewed as more of an embarrassing disaster than the ACA? The launch of the ACA was also absolutely atrocious. It was embarrassing because it damaged the idea of American military supremacy in its execution. The Taliban had to hold the door open for US personnel to leave. It would have gotten everyone captured or killed if the Taliban had been hostile. There was no footage of the ACA reproducing the fall of Saigon This appearance of weakness is why Biden had them immediately drone strike "ISIS" but it turned out it was actually an aid worker and his family
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Apr 28, 2022 19:41
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Fritz the Horse posted:those "suggestive" messages read to me like really stupid edgelord bro "humor" That's absolutely what is going on there
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Apr 29, 2022 05:09
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:I'm impressed how quickly the obvious bait post got a hook. I suspect it is because the thrust of the post(Democrats were stingier with aid after taking the Senate and Presidency than they were before it and there might be consequences) rings at least a little true for the posters it riled up regardless of the sincerity of the OP
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May 2, 2022 20:26
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If national Democrats aren't willing to go scorched earth over this, they're never going to do it over anything
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May 3, 2022 03:19
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TyrantWD posted:Why would they go scorched earth over something that was already settled at the polls in 2016? As a country, we already had the debate and people decided they don’t really give a poo poo or are I’m favor of over turning Roe. I am not sure I agree that a decision by the council of ancient unelected wizards is necessarily a product of democracy
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May 3, 2022 03:31
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TyrantWD posted:It was literally one of the biggest issues of the 2016 election. Everyone had a chance to weigh in on what they want the council of ancient unelected wizards to look like and do, and they made a decision. I disagree
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May 3, 2022 03:47
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TyrantWD posted:You can’t magic things into passing just because you want it to. Politics is a numbers game, and if you don’t have the numbers, tough poo poo. The GOP got this win because their voters kept on pushing for it. They didn’t throw their hands up and say well you promised you were going to get Roe overturned 20 years ago, and you didn’t so I am not voting for you. How many votes did Leonard Leo cast
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May 3, 2022 04:28
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LegendaryFrog posted:What do you mean by "Democrats empirically have not gotten a significant amount of legislation passed to legalize abortion"? I don't want to put words in that poster's mouth but I assumed they were perhaps referencing Obama entering office in 2009 with a filibuster-proof majority after promising that he'd codify abortion and then saying "lol nah" rather than state governments, especially given the actions of a blue state government do not mean jack poo poo in the states where abortion will be outlawed
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May 3, 2022 04:49
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LegendaryFrog posted:Obama didn't enter with a filibuster proof majority. He didn't obtain one until September 24, 2009 when Paul Kirk was sworn in to fill Kennedy's vacant seat, and it lasted all of four months until February 4th, 2010 when Scott Brown was sworn in. There was the winter senate recess in the middle of that. The total number of days in which the majority lasted was 72. So what you're saying is he had 72 days to pass something without having to convince a single Republican, something which he promised in plain language that he'd attempt to pass on Day 1 of his presidency, and did not pass after saying that it was "not my highest legislative priority" at a news conference in April of that year
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May 3, 2022 05:32
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nine-gear crow posted:They also kind of spent most of those 72 days trying to figure out what the gently caress Joe Lieberman would say yes to because he wrote the playbook Joe Manchin used to kill Biden's presidency. Joe Lieberman was a co-sponsor of the Freedom of Choice Act, you can't just blame him for everything lol
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May 3, 2022 05:45
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