Heck Yes! Loam! posted:

Sotomayor calls it for what it is at least.

https://twitter.com/davidjoachim/status/1539258332564885505

Blue Footed Booby posted:

Truly this is the greatest crime of the supreme court.

Jaxyon posted:

Yes she has to smile and pretend to like the people taking away rights so they don't take away rights harder.

This is a common experience for a woman of color.

Are you saying you don't understand what she's doing or that you're just frustrated by it?

Young Freud posted:

Nothing sums up the Republican ethos as Ted Cruz describing "being a gamer" as someone who buys all the micro-transactions and doesn't actually play the game.
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1539058659304546304?s=20&t=KzGb1rVL-8HfWbfJbTgiiA

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

I'd assume that a lot of the DeSantis/Trump base cross over and DeSantis hopes that the desire for a "fresh face" or the feeling of enough people that Trump could lose again will carry him.

It seems like DeSantis wants to run regardless of whether Trump decides to run or not, but I would put money on Trump winning the primary if they both run.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

The gas tax holiday is bad policy and it is a good thing that Republicans are cynically opposed to it now because they don't want gas prices to go down and Democrats don't want to lower taxes or defund the federal highway fund.

- The last few times it has been done, about 30 to 35% of the benefit was kept by the gas retailers and oil companies.
- It would only be about a 14 cents per gallon reduction in retail prices if that trend held.
- Congress is too dysfunctional to find a new way to raise money and they will absolutely just let a crisis brew to restore funding at the last second and cause a lot of damage for no reason.

If you desperately need the retail price of gas to go as low as possible, regardless of costs or size of the reduction, and don't care about anything else, then it makes sense.

Honestly, I doubt Biden even really wants to do it. He was opposed to it in 2011 and this seems like another one of his "try something very visible to show than I am working on it, but I know it won't do anything" political moves, like calling the oil companies in to scold them.

There isn't much of anything he can do to single-handedly reduce the global price of oil, short of converting half the world's population to Amish, but he doesn't want to look like he isn't trying or just admit that there is nothing to be done for political reasons. So, they have decided his best option is to have a parade of highly visible actions that don't do anything because they assume it is the least bad option politically. They probably aren't wrong. Jimmy Carter destroyed his presidency by being honest and giving a televised address where he told Americans that there was nothing they could do about oil prices in the short term and they just had to try and manage it the best they could until it passes.

B B posted:

As requested, the Dems are doing something:

https://twitter.com/FarnoushAmiri/status/1540370901803433984

Queering Wheel posted:

I mean they're smart in the sense that they know how to obtain and wield power, but stupid in the sense that they hate women, minorities and LGBTQ+ people for no good reason and believe that angels are real

Have Some Flowers! posted:

I know we're all trying to process what we can do personally to affect this situation, right, and I'm not disagreeing with you at all. I don't have all the answers or fault anyone for how they're working through this today. But if it helps, where I land is that you can simultaneously believe that:

1) the Democratic party is a failure and electoral politics won't save us
2) spending a few hours once a year on voting blue for harm reduction is worth your time

Direct action is increasingly our way forward, and that takes many hours sustained over days, weeks, months, years. It's personally expensive and even unsafe. A few hours voting may not accomplish much, but it does accomplish something, and the economy of that is tough to beat. We have to look at it as one small tool in a much larger toolbox.

Maybe someday our grandkids can just show up for 2 hours a year of voting to see the arc of the moral universe continue to bend towards justice. But that's not us.. we have to roll up our sleeves, get dirty, and make it loving bend.

Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:

god. remember back during the primaries, when Joe Biden claimed he planned to support expanding Obamacare, and also that he was going to cure cancer

did that idea die the split second he won the primaries, or did he issue any lip service to it on the campaign trail

Grouchio posted:

Have you been this pessimistic since Biden took office?

Grouchio posted:

Okay for a second it felt like I was being told "there's nothing you can do besides vote; even if you invest/work/advocate for a group it won't be enough; fascism is inevitable" there.
Cause right now I'm too busy finding a new job to go to the pulpit as a joan-of-arc figure and inevitably get a martyr's bullet for my troubles, for daring to make a difference.
argh

Herstory Begins Now posted:

I struggle to imagine an outcome to the left rolling over and letting conservatives win that results in anything good. both at home and abroad

-Blackadder- posted:

Mmm, the hypothesis that our present would be no different if in the past we'd just let Republicans win every elected position in government, is certainly an interesting one. Maybe a little unfair to Republicans though, I kind of feel like they've been working extra hard lately, to highlight the subtle differences in their policy priorities.

Shall we test this hypothesis? No one votes for the Democrats in the upcoming mid-terms and we'll see if that leads to Democrats implementing more progressive policies.

I AM GRANDO posted:

Public demonstrations have a much longer history than what we have seen in the US for the last 30 years. The idea can be to frighten power into considering what will happen if they don’t make some concessions. American thought has embraced a warped, neutered idea of what demonstrations are from the miseducation we receive about the civil rights movement and how it operated and won.

Rigel posted:

If their demands are not going to be met by voting, then that means they are unpopular, the politicians and people in power will not fear or care about them at all, and there will not be ends met by "other means". Your "other means" (unless you are talking a serious going for broke violent revolution) would result in a lot of people being chased by the FBI and going to prison for a long time, sharing cells with the 1/6 insurrection idiots.

I'm beginning to realize that some people here actually think they can intimidate the people in power to give them what they want outside of elections. no, they won't fear you and they won't care. That is naive.

Queering Wheel posted:

People weren't trying to oppose a mass surveillance state with shitloads of cops and soldiers armed to the teeth with modern tools and weaponry for most of recorded history

Willa Rogers posted:

Biden will not run for reelection.

David Axelrod is on the record saying he shouldn't and lots of others are now saying so off the record & on background. I doubt that Obama wants his legacy (further) marred by a failed Biden presidency staffed with Obama-era retreads.

Biden's polling has been dropping every week for almost a year now, and it's in Jimmy Carter territory if not worse. Pelosi openly defied his gas card idea, inflation & shortages have no end in sight, and candidates aren't asking him to come campaign with them this year.

He looks frail & doddering, and can't get through a five-minute speech without some faux pas. He's not improving with time, bc when you're that old things get worse over time, not better. He's the wrong guy for the job at this particular moment in time, and clearly not up to it, and the people who forced him on us now know that.

But the minute he announces that, he's got a lame-duck presidency & wannabes nipping at his heels, so I don't expect we'll hear anything till at least early next year.

SMEGMA_MAIL posted:

I’m surprised in a good way that for some not online liberals I know this seems to be the final straw or near enough to abandon JUST VOTE BLUE. Like very formerly decorum brained people joking about the Kavanaugh plot.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Came up before that the establishment has its youth wing too, and they have been waiting around for 30 years for literally any reward for their service. Joe Kennedy III I think was meant to be their rising star, and fuckin lol.

Twincityhacker posted:

Clearly the answer is to not vote and let an even smaller minority be able to vote in a fash.

cat botherer posted:

Real talk: what would it take for Pelosi to lose her speaker (soon minority leader) status? I can’t imagine anybody but the DCCist of the DCC think she’s doing great.

FizFashizzle posted:

Enough shame to compel her to step down.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Biden's already been called 'The American Brezhnev'.

They absolutely are. They spent decades having this mentality implanted in them, and since history went off the rails in 2016 they've been unable to reconcile that with reality all this time. They never had any other plan.

Harris in particular is a Clinton creature, perhaps the ideal of one. Which is why she's so completely useless.

WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:

She's a loving traitor to minorities and is an utter sellout. No one but old blue dog conservative Hispanic/Black people like her. No body likes her. She doesn't do well in any categories that would be needed to an inclusive coalition.

If she was a Republican they would absolutely love her.

(If anyone has evidence to the contrary I invite you to discuss it)

azflyboy posted:

I realize your post is sarcastic, but does anyone actually like Harris?

I remember she initially generated some excitement for being the first woman of color nominated as VP, but that seems to have lasted about as long as it took for people to remember that her Presidential campaign went down in flames, she had been (metaphorically) in bed with the cops, and she's pretty terrible at interviews, so I'm unclear who she actually appeals to at the moment.

Koos Group posted:

Where has she implied certainty that she'll be president?

-Blackadder- posted:

Hilary is purestrain East Coast Liberal White lady and has said some unbelievably racist poo poo in the past, but ironically, I thought she would've been decent in the chair.

She had some of the most exec experience of any one coming into the job. She stomped all over Trump in debates like an academic decathlete. She semed to have put an extensive amount of work into prepping for the position by study and making sure she knew her stuff, maybe even more than Obama's nerdy rear end. (It's been awhile so I could be misremembering).

The only real issue was likability/campaigning. Obviously those are important because candidates need to get elected to do the job. But it was frustrating as hell watching what was basically the honor student; someone who was practically over-prepared, stand next to the kid whose three sentences of notes are wrapped in chewing gum in his back pocket so he basically just made poo poo up. Like yeah, these candidates need to get elected but, Trump had to have his own stupid name fed to him in briefing reports to keep his attention. It couldn't have been more cartoonish if you recruited a pet rock to fly the space shuttle. It would be nice if we could at least acknowledge that this is a job important enough to be done by a semi-competent, informed person, who values knowledge. I feel like things have gotten so bad that we haven't even bothered to shoot for that standard in a while.

As for Harris, no black people I know, that know who she is, like her.

TheIncredulousHulk posted:

Harris being weak and unpopular is a feature for the party power brokers, not a bug. The more help a candidate needs to stay afloat, the more leverage you have if you're in a position to provide that help, and the more compliant the candidate will be toward your goals

cat botherer posted:

He became a very important lesson about the need for leftist leaders to pay attention to their personal security.

FlamingLiberal posted:

The Dems are running out of time to fill vacant court seats before they probably lose the Senate in November, and as of right now there is zero urgency to speed things up

https://twitter.com/matthewstiegler/status/1542132738404278272?s=21&t=9tj-OrjhB_8HxWWR4O4Egg

(Thread)

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

bird food bathtub posted:

Love the optimism, but don't necessarily share it. Personal opinion is that we've had the last thing we will have for a very long time that resembled what the US has historically called a presidential election.

The GOP is going ape poo poo on every position at all levels of government that said no to the half baked coup. "Legally" removing their power, stuffing them to the gills with hard core ideologues, death threats to the people that remain. They learned the lessons from their dry run, know what to work on, and haven't stopped for years.

Willa Rogers posted:

See, here it is again: the fantasy that Trump will face DeSantis in some sort of death match, when by all accounts they're buddies, and just last week Trump mentioned running as a joint ticket.

Why would "polite Republicans" even consider the idea of voting for DeSantis in the first place? Because he's not quite as vulgar as Trump while promoting the same ideas?

eta: On which points do the two disagree? Have they ever disagreed with each other publicly?

Flying-PCP posted:

The basic incumbency power of a Biden corpse running in 2024 is probably worth more than the amount of charisma and popularity of all the other presidential candidate hopefuls.

some plague rats posted:

I don't but the death match scenario either, but I just cannot see a Trump/DeSantis ticket happening, not for ideological reasons, but because I don't buy either of them being willing to play second fiddle. Trump would never accept VP, obviously, and DeSantis doesn't strike me as a guy who would be willing to put his ambitions on hold, especially at the cost of hurting his own chances by getting Mike Penced for everything that goes wrong. That leaves a contested primary, which DeSantis loses handily for the simple reason that he's a stiff, unlikeable dork. He plays the culture war game as best he can but the guy has zero personal charisma, trump would bully him off the stage the first time they met.

The probation message is the perfect punchline that this post needed, well done mods

PT6A posted:

Not treating minors like property of their parents, or suggesting that you can't assault them under the guise of "discipline"? That's absurd and un-American!

There are public schools in the US where teachers are permitted to hit children with paddles -- assault and battery with a weapon. It still blows my mind.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

That is definitely a part of it, but many other countries with much more robust social support systems have as much or more violent crime than the U.S. and just as much mental illness, but the difference is that when someone goes on a rampage with a knife or a bat, that they usually can't hit 30+ people in a few seconds.

The U.K. actually has more violent crime overall than the U.S., but their crimes are dramatically less likely to involve a body count and their armed robberies are much less likely to escalate to homicide.

Mental health, societal problems, etc. are all important pieces. But, the main difference between the U.S. and other countries is the ease of access and available firepower of guns.

Edit: And, of course, most shooting deaths in the U.S. aren't from "mass" shootings and are from situations where 1 to 2 people are killed at a time happening 45,000 times over the course of the year.

Ogmius815 posted:

I mean if your theory is just that Mitch is lying and he won’t hold up his end of the bargain, that’s easily remedied. Chuck Schumer gives McConell a list of judges he wants to confirm before sine die adjournment. He indicates they will be confirmed in the order listed. “I call your attention to the last name on the list, your buddy you want to get a job for. We’ll get to who we get to.”

Sharkie posted:

What danger does he face from potential bribery implications? Like, what would that look like and what would the actual consequences be?

Why does the Democratic Party care more about working with Republicans to give money to the military than they do about abortion rights? I am ready to vote so hard right now, if anyone has any recommendations for a political party that won't abandon abortion rights for defense spending, I'm all ears.

Do you think this is a wise move that will stop Republicans from calling Democrats weak on defense?

Considering that currently Republicans are putting all the blame on Democrats for uh, stealing and eating children, abandoning good things in order to appease the people that think you're literally agents of literal Satan and will attack you relentlessly regardless of what you do doesn't seem very smart. Or moral.

Oxyclean posted:

It's marketing. They gotta take credit for what they can or the opposition capitalizes on it.

People are going to blame them for the economy either way, so they might as well take credit for the "good."

Mr Hootington posted:

Yellen and Biden both saying they agree with Powell and that they support Powell's moves to cause a recession places blame on them. The reduction in government spending Biden is bragging about also adds negative pressure to gdp.

Edit: one of the ideas kicking around the "economic intelligentsia" is allowing the student loan forbearance to end so less money is available to the underclasses to spend so inflation will go down.

Mr Hootington posted:

It might be the only option our evil system taught them to use, but they also want to destroy all wealth holdings for anyone below the top 10%.

The stimulus and expanded unemployment really pissed off the ruling elite. They do not view that money and wealth as earned by the undeserving poor. That is their rightful money and wealth so they are clawing it back through prices increases. Inflation wasn't a problem until wages started going up in october/November 2021.

Edit: the forced recession isn't about goods and services inflstion, but wage inflation and the need to suppress workers. The fed thinks the labor/capital relationship is out of balance and labor has too much power.

Main Paineframe posted:

I feel like this is completely missing my point. The job of the left isn't to move the Democratic Party left, it's to drag the voters left. If we can turn the eligible voting population of a particular Democrat's district into a bunch of raging socialists, that Democrat will be forced to either move left or be replaced. Rinse and repeat. Rather than focusing on convincing politicians, we should be focusing on convincing those politicians' voters. The right gets that, and many effective issue lobbyists get that. We need to get with it as well.

The goal isn't to convince politicians, the goal is to convince people. Convince everyone. Politicians' ability to stand against their own constituents strong desires is actually fairly limited.

Vanguard Warden posted:

Holding power also prevents someone else from holding it, and then in turn from wielding it, and right now there's a bunch of theocratic fascists who would very much like to do so and then prevent anyone else from ever doing so again.