The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
Please vote in the Forum Structure Poll. Polling will close at 2PM EST on January 21, 2025.
The Decline (and Fall?) of the American Republic (And the Democratic Response To It)
enlightenedbum
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
This sort of spun out of discussion in the Mueller thread about how the Democrats can and should be grappling with the clearly impeachable offenses of Donald Trump. This is not a thread about Trump, but more generally about how the American constitutional system is breaking down.
We have seen, arguably over the course of the entire post-war era (with Eisenhower warning against the military industrial complex and all the abuses by the CIA that the Church Committee uncovered) a steady erosion of the fundamental principles of the American government. The first real major blow was Nixon, and especially Ford's pardon, because fundamentally the system worked (slowly, but it worked) until Ford pardoned Nixon. Then we had a similarly significant scandal in the 80s with Iran-Contra, but the perpetrators of that were allowed to get off entirely by a combination of Republican intransigence, skulduggery (with one William Barr being a major player!), and the media rolling over because we couldn't afford a failed presidency. Again, this culminates in the Christmas pardons by Bush when he's a lame duck.
The problem accelerates with Bush v. Gore and the post-9/11 national security state. Torture programs are instituted, a war is launched on false pretenses, massive warrantless surveillance is conducted. Constitutionally, it's a disaster. No one is punished for this, because we "have to look forward." The establishment praises Obama for this, saying it would rip the country apart and lead to politically motivated prosecutions of all future presidents. Much the same way the conventional wisdom had become that Ford's pardon of Nixon was a brave stand that would help heal the country. Most Democrats reach out to the GOP and seek bipartisanship as the core of any good law. This weakens their economic recovery package, delays and weakens their health care bill, etc. They still need all 60 Senate votes to pass either of those things because McConnell has issued his blanket minority rule through the abuse of filibuster rules. On most law, the country had previously been a majority rules country. If you had the majority in the House and Senate, as long as you weren't trying to stop white people from abusing black people, you could basically pass your priorities and the voters could decide if they liked them or not and change the party in power at the next election. At the same time, we have REDMAP, which seeks to force permanent minority rule (it is literally impossible for the Democrats to get a legislative majority in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, or North Carolina until the maps are thrown out in the last few months) in both states and in Congress. The Voting Rights Act is eviscerated in a ridiculous ruling. Pat Leahy stands up for the blue slip process, allowing GOP Senators to block Obama's district court judges unilaterally. McConnell declines to even hold a vote on confirming a Supreme Court Justice, and the GOP vows to hold the seat open for Hillary Clinton's entire first term.
But then Trump wins. And what had been a burning issue with Bush v. Gore and 9/11 becomes an raging fire. Naturally the GOP immediately changes pretty much any rule they think they can get away (except the legislative filibuster so far). The blue slip rule dies quickly. Debate is limited so that judges can be confirmed more quickly. Trump declines to divest from his businesses which are freely open to bribes from corporations and foreign governments. He embezzles from the taxpayers directly to promote his properties. He obstructs justice in at least ten different ways with regards to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, including his potential cooperation with that interference. He gets cronies installed on the Supreme Court, who overturn lower court rulings ending his Muslim ban (a clear first amendment violation) and seem likely to overturn lower court rulings on REDMAP gerrymandering.
And most recently, William Barr and the administration have made it clear that they do not feel that the Congress, and in particular the Democratically controlled House, are allowed to perform oversight at all. They won't recognize subpoenas for witnesses, they won't send documents, they won't appear in front of House committees, and those people who deign to appear will lie their asses off, as we saw with Barr this Wednesday.
It appears from reporting this week that Barr and Trump are going to direct Justice to try to gin up a prosecution of whoever the Democratic nominee is. They have started on Biden already. It makes sense, because that was their playbook in 2016, when they didn't have the power of the Department of Justice. That was explicitly what Benghazi was about, and when that didn't work they got some help from their friends in the Kremlin and the New York Times to make the emails a crime. Trump has already declared a national emergency for a fake situation to try to govern funding without Congress. He's committing literal crimes against humanity with the child kidnapping plans. He's ordering federal agents to ignore the law. And the GOP supports him entirely. The most you'll get is Romney or Collins saying they're very sad about it and then voting to continue these actions.
This is all banana republic shit. But I don't think the problem is Trump. The problem is the GOP (and their media allies). So, how do you fix any of this? Well, it almost has to rely on the opposition party, so what are they doing?
There's some good stuff, like the lawsuits to overturn the maps that lock Democrats out of power in several states. But ultimately all of the Democratic responses rely on the continued functioning of the institutions as they have been. They rely on SCOTUS caring about principles like one man, one vote or freedom of association, or like... the text of legislation as it is and not how John Roberts imagines it to be. It mostly looks like fecklessness, at least among current leadership. We'll describe Trump and Barr as having committed clear crimes and violations of their oaths of office, but we won't pursue any remedies for that. Because if we look aggressive, it might make someone angry and then what will the GOP do it response? They're already going to use their power to try to assassinate the character of whoever the 2020 nominee is, get with the picture. We have to make one more good faith gesture to Barr after he 1) blatantly lied to muddy the waters and establish a pro-Trump media narrative 2) refused to hand over documents and 3) refused to show up to be questioned by staff lawyers.
But even beyond that, outside of a few notable exceptions (all but one of whom are not Senators), Democrats are not calling for the elimination of the filibuster. They're not calling for the elimination of the electoral college. They don't want to pack the courts, because that would just result in retaliation by the GOP, ignoring the fact that the Merrick Garland debacle and McConnell's almost total blanket embargo on Obama's nominees was the GOP packing the courts. They do not seem to realize that there need to be significant structural changes in the government to fix the constitutional crisis that we are in. They seem to believe that Donald Trump is the singular problem, an aberration. A bad nightmare that will go away if we just wait him out and beat him in 2020. Which is no guarantee. Especially now that he has an Attorney General who has even less respect for the rule of law than Jefferson Beauregard Sessions did. And especially because every indication is that he will do nothing to protect the election against foreign interference, because he knows that he will be helped by Russia again.
What's my suggestion? Democrats should start campaigning on the following big ideas:
1) We will stand for the rule of law, even if we lose the vote. Some principles are worth fighting for, and we believe that no person is above the law is the very first of those. I think people in this country are desperate for some accountability for the powerful. Bankers especially, but also crooked politicians. Hold the hearings, establish the facts we're pretty sure are true, and impeach the motherfucker to quote the Congresswoman in the district next to mine. I suspect that the weird poll results where Americans basically think Trump is a criminal (this is usually 50/50 or slightly more who think he has committed crimes) but are against impeachment (25-40% depending on the poll) is because leadership is splitting Democrats on that issue. Practically speaking this means contempt charges and impeachment proceedings against Barr and Trump.
2) We want to return to the idea that every voter counts. HR1 is a good start here. But we need to add other ways to eliminate minority rule (not minority rights, but minority RULE) to that agenda. Elimination of the filibuster and the electoral college would be important steps. Explicitly make partisan gerrymandering illegal the way we made gerrymandering to deprive racial minorities of representation illegal.
This is not to say you also don't campaign on pocketbook issues like taxes, health care, jobs, etc. Because there's a unifying message here, which is that the powerful are rigging the system for themselves, and are getting rid of all legal obstacles to them taking all of the power.
Put even more simply: Democrats need to pick some stuff they believe in and make those things non-negotiable.
We have seen, arguably over the course of the entire post-war era (with Eisenhower warning against the military industrial complex and all the abuses by the CIA that the Church Committee uncovered) a steady erosion of the fundamental principles of the American government. The first real major blow was Nixon, and especially Ford's pardon, because fundamentally the system worked (slowly, but it worked) until Ford pardoned Nixon. Then we had a similarly significant scandal in the 80s with Iran-Contra, but the perpetrators of that were allowed to get off entirely by a combination of Republican intransigence, skulduggery (with one William Barr being a major player!), and the media rolling over because we couldn't afford a failed presidency. Again, this culminates in the Christmas pardons by Bush when he's a lame duck.
The problem accelerates with Bush v. Gore and the post-9/11 national security state. Torture programs are instituted, a war is launched on false pretenses, massive warrantless surveillance is conducted. Constitutionally, it's a disaster. No one is punished for this, because we "have to look forward." The establishment praises Obama for this, saying it would rip the country apart and lead to politically motivated prosecutions of all future presidents. Much the same way the conventional wisdom had become that Ford's pardon of Nixon was a brave stand that would help heal the country. Most Democrats reach out to the GOP and seek bipartisanship as the core of any good law. This weakens their economic recovery package, delays and weakens their health care bill, etc. They still need all 60 Senate votes to pass either of those things because McConnell has issued his blanket minority rule through the abuse of filibuster rules. On most law, the country had previously been a majority rules country. If you had the majority in the House and Senate, as long as you weren't trying to stop white people from abusing black people, you could basically pass your priorities and the voters could decide if they liked them or not and change the party in power at the next election. At the same time, we have REDMAP, which seeks to force permanent minority rule (it is literally impossible for the Democrats to get a legislative majority in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, or North Carolina until the maps are thrown out in the last few months) in both states and in Congress. The Voting Rights Act is eviscerated in a ridiculous ruling. Pat Leahy stands up for the blue slip process, allowing GOP Senators to block Obama's district court judges unilaterally. McConnell declines to even hold a vote on confirming a Supreme Court Justice, and the GOP vows to hold the seat open for Hillary Clinton's entire first term.
But then Trump wins. And what had been a burning issue with Bush v. Gore and 9/11 becomes an raging fire. Naturally the GOP immediately changes pretty much any rule they think they can get away (except the legislative filibuster so far). The blue slip rule dies quickly. Debate is limited so that judges can be confirmed more quickly. Trump declines to divest from his businesses which are freely open to bribes from corporations and foreign governments. He embezzles from the taxpayers directly to promote his properties. He obstructs justice in at least ten different ways with regards to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, including his potential cooperation with that interference. He gets cronies installed on the Supreme Court, who overturn lower court rulings ending his Muslim ban (a clear first amendment violation) and seem likely to overturn lower court rulings on REDMAP gerrymandering.
And most recently, William Barr and the administration have made it clear that they do not feel that the Congress, and in particular the Democratically controlled House, are allowed to perform oversight at all. They won't recognize subpoenas for witnesses, they won't send documents, they won't appear in front of House committees, and those people who deign to appear will lie their asses off, as we saw with Barr this Wednesday.
It appears from reporting this week that Barr and Trump are going to direct Justice to try to gin up a prosecution of whoever the Democratic nominee is. They have started on Biden already. It makes sense, because that was their playbook in 2016, when they didn't have the power of the Department of Justice. That was explicitly what Benghazi was about, and when that didn't work they got some help from their friends in the Kremlin and the New York Times to make the emails a crime. Trump has already declared a national emergency for a fake situation to try to govern funding without Congress. He's committing literal crimes against humanity with the child kidnapping plans. He's ordering federal agents to ignore the law. And the GOP supports him entirely. The most you'll get is Romney or Collins saying they're very sad about it and then voting to continue these actions.
This is all banana republic shit. But I don't think the problem is Trump. The problem is the GOP (and their media allies). So, how do you fix any of this? Well, it almost has to rely on the opposition party, so what are they doing?
There's some good stuff, like the lawsuits to overturn the maps that lock Democrats out of power in several states. But ultimately all of the Democratic responses rely on the continued functioning of the institutions as they have been. They rely on SCOTUS caring about principles like one man, one vote or freedom of association, or like... the text of legislation as it is and not how John Roberts imagines it to be. It mostly looks like fecklessness, at least among current leadership. We'll describe Trump and Barr as having committed clear crimes and violations of their oaths of office, but we won't pursue any remedies for that. Because if we look aggressive, it might make someone angry and then what will the GOP do it response? They're already going to use their power to try to assassinate the character of whoever the 2020 nominee is, get with the picture. We have to make one more good faith gesture to Barr after he 1) blatantly lied to muddy the waters and establish a pro-Trump media narrative 2) refused to hand over documents and 3) refused to show up to be questioned by staff lawyers.
But even beyond that, outside of a few notable exceptions (all but one of whom are not Senators), Democrats are not calling for the elimination of the filibuster. They're not calling for the elimination of the electoral college. They don't want to pack the courts, because that would just result in retaliation by the GOP, ignoring the fact that the Merrick Garland debacle and McConnell's almost total blanket embargo on Obama's nominees was the GOP packing the courts. They do not seem to realize that there need to be significant structural changes in the government to fix the constitutional crisis that we are in. They seem to believe that Donald Trump is the singular problem, an aberration. A bad nightmare that will go away if we just wait him out and beat him in 2020. Which is no guarantee. Especially now that he has an Attorney General who has even less respect for the rule of law than Jefferson Beauregard Sessions did. And especially because every indication is that he will do nothing to protect the election against foreign interference, because he knows that he will be helped by Russia again.
What's my suggestion? Democrats should start campaigning on the following big ideas:
1) We will stand for the rule of law, even if we lose the vote. Some principles are worth fighting for, and we believe that no person is above the law is the very first of those. I think people in this country are desperate for some accountability for the powerful. Bankers especially, but also crooked politicians. Hold the hearings, establish the facts we're pretty sure are true, and impeach the motherfucker to quote the Congresswoman in the district next to mine. I suspect that the weird poll results where Americans basically think Trump is a criminal (this is usually 50/50 or slightly more who think he has committed crimes) but are against impeachment (25-40% depending on the poll) is because leadership is splitting Democrats on that issue. Practically speaking this means contempt charges and impeachment proceedings against Barr and Trump.
2) We want to return to the idea that every voter counts. HR1 is a good start here. But we need to add other ways to eliminate minority rule (not minority rights, but minority RULE) to that agenda. Elimination of the filibuster and the electoral college would be important steps. Explicitly make partisan gerrymandering illegal the way we made gerrymandering to deprive racial minorities of representation illegal.
This is not to say you also don't campaign on pocketbook issues like taxes, health care, jobs, etc. Because there's a unifying message here, which is that the powerful are rigging the system for themselves, and are getting rid of all legal obstacles to them taking all of the power.
Put even more simply: Democrats need to pick some stuff they believe in and make those things non-negotiable.
The idea that your vote is a moral statement about you or who you vote for is some backwards ass libertarian nonsense. Your vote is about society. Vote to protect the vulnerable.
+29
This discussion has been closed.
Posts
Nah. There is a middle. There are purple districts and states Democrats need to win.
But more relevant I think is that they just don't really fully internalise how bad the situation is right now and how far outside the rules this has all gotten. They are all looking to just go back to the way it used to be.
This myopia exists on the left too, for the record. Bernie talks about how he can get 60 votes in the Senate for his plans so we don't need to do anything about the filibuster.
(Not a primary thread, just a prominent example on the left)
What do you say to the argument that what’s happening now is not terribly different from, for example, Nixon’s admin committing crimes and ignoring subpoenas and installing cronies? Gerrymandering has had an impact but so has people self-sorting by blue and red. Fox News exists now when it didn’t then, but there’s always been 20-30% of the public who are hardcore assholes.
In other words, is our system actually collapsing in a steady progression since the 60s, or are we just on one end of the pendulum swing? Is the GOP more racist now than back when they were openly pro-segregation? Are Trump and Barr that much more corrupt than say, Nixon and Bork?
Frankly I don't know what to do. There is no system of government that can stand when there are two many bad actors in power. We have too many bad actors in power because that's what too many people want. Voters want liers and bullys and racist and rapist in power. You can't write laws to fix stupidity and immorality.
What I'd like is a techno-oligarchy benevolent dictatorship so we can actually try to fix climate change and wealth disparity instead of fighting about abortion and vaccination.
In 1974, there were (eventually) parts of the GOP willing to participate in the hearings and vote to impeach. On obstruction in the House, 6/17 Republicans voted to advance that article. On abuse of power, 7. Just 2 for contempt of congress. After US v. Nixon, the Republicans who voted against the obstruction charge all said they would vote to impeach him.
I don't think Trump and Barr are less ethical than Nixon and Mitchell (the right analogue, the AG who was sent to prison for obstruction). I do think the GOP as a whole is less ethical. And during Nixon's time, the Dixiecrats were moving in that direction, but they hadn't wholly consumed the political party. It had other centers of power, like Nelson Rockefeller's wing. And the idea that the Democrats cannot legitimately governed so must be stopped from exercising any power is relatively new. I didn't give Newt Gingrich enough blame in the OP, as the earliest I think you can argue that started was 1994.
I also think things are different now because Ford hadn't pardoned Nixon yet. Elite immunity had not been wholly ingrained in the culture.
That can either mean tailoring policy to appeal to moderate and conservative dems, or tailoring the message to win them over, but they exist and need to be a part of whatever strategy we implement going forward.
I tend to think another problem with Democrats is that they think everyone is as ideological as they are. Most people are not. So you get a country where a vast majority identifies as moderate or conservative but also around 60% supports Warren's wealth tax (I've seen it higher if you don't attach her name to it).
Most people respond to values. And the GOP has easy to name values. They are pro-white, pro-business, pro-forced birth (they would say life). Democrats are not nearly as easy to name, though if they asked me I would tell them to say they're pro-justice and pro-equality.
Make an example out of the trump administration. Not just donald, but every single one of the people who were engaged in a hint of malfeasance from his apointees to his kids to anyone else who got in on this. Make it clear that the days of just hoping things get better are gone and that any signs of federal malignancy will be treated the same way as the biolgical kind.
And if the republicans want to go after the democrats in the same way then by all means do so. Because corruption on this scale can't be tolerated no matter the party affiliation.
Those people are in the minority. The trouble is, their votes count for more; and it benefits the party currently in power. But then, even if Democrats had the ability and the will to do something about it, I don't think the electorate would respond well to the kind of changes that would be necessary. Most people don't realize how skewed the system is toward rural voters, so they would see attempts to fix it as a brazen power grab by Democrats. Which Republicans would be happy to encourage.
I don't know how you solve the issue of low-information voters, especially when Republicans are perfectly happy to gaslight anyone who happens to be listening.
This article gives a decent primer on it, although it's a year old: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/2/16929764/how-democracies-die-trump-book-levitsky-ziblatt It's pretty trivial to see how both of those have been imploded by the GOP.
There's a bunch more in there about the way democracies rot from inside as they breakdown due to political parties playing hardball and making deals with extremists.
It's all useful for understanding the issues at hand though.
I worry this is additional depressing, but this part of the book they cite in the article:
We should probably note it wasn't a coup or anything like that that happened when Hitler took the reins. Every step he took in turning the Republic into Nazi Germany was via the system itself.
So then we run into the whole thing of "why the fuck are we in a two-party system?"
This is flat out ridiculous. It’s absolutely possible to prefer conservative monetary policy and liberal social policies.
The biggest issue I see with this thread is the assumption that Democrats need to act as a unified force the way the republicans do so that the posters wishes can be upheld (my perception of the posts here). That’s not how a big tent party works.
I posit that if the Democrats acted in such a manner we would have the same problem that is being presented here - just with a more “acceptable” policy standpoint for those on the left.
Edit
This kinda feels like the impeachment thread again actually
That's the main problem though. Most of the American people are just flat out dumb and they can't be educated because they are deeply entrenched in their ignorance. Whatever legislative or campaign based solution you can concoct to try and repair our democracy will falter because too many people just don't accept reality as reality, because they live in another one.
I remember the Victoria series of games, which as part of it covered 19th century politics. To make a long story short, there was a establishment version of each party - conservative, liberal, socialist, and an extremist version - reactionary/fascist, anarchist, communist. I thought jt was silly because if an extremist party got elected they would just immediately change the constitution of the country to a dictatorship.
But in retrospect that does seem to be pretty much how it works.
Fundamentally what I'm advocating for in the OP is:
1) The candidate with the plurality of the popular vote becomes president
2) It becomes very hard for the party with the plurality of the vote for Congress/state legislatures to not control those bodies
3) The party with a majority in the Senate gets to pass its priorities if its caucus is unified
4) The politically powerful are held accountable if they commit crimes
Basically, I think our democracy would be far healthier if parties could basically enact their priorities when they have unified control. Citizens would see the effects of voting for those parties, and hopefully make informed decisions. Instead you get 2009-2010, when Democrats had enormous majorities and the presidency and couldn't get much done because there are too many veto points.
What I am diagnosing as the problem is that the GOP is standing against all four of those points. Democrats are generally for all of them, but I think should be fighting harder and recognizing what the GOP is. A few of them do, usually the younger class of recently elected politicians who have only known the GOP as I describe it and not the semi-reasonable one of the pre-Gingrich or pre-McConnell eras.
And it's like a third of the country.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
This has a lot to do with basically every major media outlet being run by enormous corporations. It's hard to win the messaging war when your message is contradicted in all of the reporting and analysis people see.
Ok. Well 1-3 are a fundamental change in how the republic is structured and I fail to see how the Democrats are even relevant to that discussion - which then begs the question as to why it’s part of the OP and the title.
Edit
And look - 4 puts us back into the impeachment thread!
They really aren't.
1) National Popular Vote Interstate Compact
2) Stricter rules around gerrymandering
3) Kill the filibuster
Those are all relatively straightforward ways to get a lot of fixes done and all without opening the Constitution.
Shortest Straight-Line Method just gets enshrined.
Democrats will shriek about minority-majority districts but if you want a given percentage of your legislature to be minorities we should really just implement a quota.
The right has a structural advantage in the US system at the federal and state level and maybe even at the local level too. That's what you are seeing play out there. A big part of the world we see now is because the GOP uses that structural advantage to pass policy that only a minority wants. A minority of the GOP even in many ways. It also means the Democrats need to move more towards the median to get majority control.
I think a really important thing to remember when thinking about how the US system works and what you see in it's results is this:
The Republican party has a structural advantage within the US system and it uses that structural advantage not to be more popular but instead to pass less popular policy
I think just getting independent redistricting commissions going everywhere would get a long way towards the goal and also bypass the Roberts' court.
But yeah, I fear the Roberts court will almost certainly look at what is going on and realize they need to step in and legalize the surgically-precise disenfranchisement of black and minority voters in order for the GOP to maintain power in the future.
We have some pretty conclusive real world application showing that moving center fails to secure the states you say they need.
Are you defining conservative monetary policy as the current policy advocated by Republicans? I'd agree that's fraud, and trickle down economical is garbage, but at the base is how much to tax and what services to provide. The US is stuck in a place where services provided don't match expectations based on how much tax people pay and thus people want lower taxes. I'd argue that you could increase taxes slightly and increases services dramatically since current taxes cover base cost of goverance, but that seems like a hard argument for Democrats to make. This and not spending an absolute insane amount of money on defense would get us closer to a European model.
Because i suspect lot of the expectations people have are not going to be realistic considering the actual cost of things.
And that's before we go into how interconnected everything is, so just slashing school budget because some people don't have kids so don't want to pay for them is going to have pretty major consequences down the line outside education, or public transport, or roads, or conservation efforts, etc...
And even if those are not issues, we get to people being utterly clueless about national budgets, thinking that austerity and tightening the belt during recession is a great idea at national level.
I agree with almost everything you said, except "Democrats need to move more towards the median..." and it's a shame that discussions about strategy get overshadowed by discussions about platform.
It's a nice thought to believe that if a candidate goes on TV and says the correct things (whether the correct things are leftist or centrist; poetic or pragmatic; policy details or philosophical values) that the voters will vote for them because they like the message.
I'm deeply skeptical about how much a Presidential candidate's actual platform really affects their chances in the general election.
But the other part of your post, about how the right-wing has a structural electoral advantage, is incredibly important. The enormity of the rural bias in US elections - in both houses of Congress and in the Presidency - cannot be overstated. This structural bias is as old as our country. What's novel are two factors: first, rural areas now comprise a minority of the population (the 50% mark was breached during the Great Depression, but it accelerated during the information era) and, second, correlations between population density and party line vote followed a similar pattern (emerging during the Great Depression but accelerating as employment became less and less agrarian).
Pessimistically, I don't see this trend reversing any time soon. I think the next couple of decades for Democrats are about damage control. Eventually, someday, demographics are going to win. Some dyed-red state is going to become a swing state and it will put the fear of the Electoral College back into the Republicans. But it's going to take a long time.
Two aphorisms can both be true. On one hand, the arc of the moral universe is long and it bends towards justice. On the other, in the long run, we are all dead. Twenty years is a long time to wait for health insurance, for civil rights, for a job that isn't crushing, for elections that matter. I wish I had a good answer to that, but I don't.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
"But Henroid by having the job longer they can do things more guaranteed." In my three decades + of life, no, that's not how it works. Over and over we've seen the party of "hey don't rock the boat, baby steps" vs the party of "our way or the highway." As far as policies crafted in the USA goes, the biggest changes have always come from the Republicans and it's always been for the worst. Yes Democrats have had small victories (which are easily swept aside by brazen GOP control), and they did have the one big thing with the ACA. But the Patriot Act, the travel ban, the war on drugs, the culture of employees working for damn near free compared to the few in executive positions? All Republican, and have stood the test of time. And largely because efforts to stop and overturn those things don't show up from the "opposition" party, because they don't want to do too much because "oh no, the middle." A middle who frankly doesn't matter because our election turn-outs are SO FUCKING SMALL SO HOW CAN YOU EVEN KNOW? Oh, polling? How about we go for something more practical rather than playing a political game that doesn't exist to most Americans?
It's pissing me off, frankly.
Try something new. Go fucking all out on issues Americans face, and maybe that voter turn out will skyrocket. For fuck's sake.
But hey why seize on that momentum when you can be Nancy Pelosi? Why look at what succeeded when you can write it off as "fluke"?