6mo ago

‘The American people did not vote for whatever the hell this is,’ warns House Democrat

www.commondreams.org

'The American People Did Not Vote for Whatever the Hell This Is,' Warns House Democrat | Common Dreams

Summary

The House GOP's new rules package aims to weaken minority party influence while advancing a pro-corporate agenda.

Key provisions include shielding the House speaker from bipartisan accountability and fast-tracking 12 GOP bills without allowing amendments, including measures to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC) and protect fracking.

Democrats, led by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), criticized the package for ignoring economic and social issues like inflation and housing while prioritizing tax cuts for billionaires.

Republicans plan to offset these costs by slashing social programs, sparking warnings of further congressional dysfunction.

153 comments

"The American people did not vote for whatever the hell this is,"
Yeah, actually, they did. Millions of Democrat voters stayed home. Every single state shifted right.
McGovern added, "and you better believe that Democrats will not let Republicans turn the House of Representatives into a rubber stamp for their extremist policies."
You're in the minority party. Republicans have control of all 3 branches of government, and many state governments shifted right.
Simply put, what the fuck are you going to do about it? Democrats have exactly zero power outside of sitting back and watching.
- Democrats have exactly zero power outside of sitting back and watching.
  And yet they'll still somehow get blamed for everything that's coming.
  
  No shortage of people that just stupidly (or with an agenda) blame dems for the shitty republicans. People on lemmy saying Reagan was Carter’s fault, for example.
  That’s how abusers think. “Look what you made me do.” Look how you made me stay home and not vote so now we have trump.
  
  And they'll continue shifting right, blocking a meaningful progressive agenda, and promote neoliberal "nothing will fundamentally change" policy until they are completely consumed/eliminated by the fascist plutocracy.
- The republicans have held the minority many times and obstructed the fuck out of our government. If Dems really care they can do a lot to prevent shit in congress.
  We will see how much they actually care in the next 2 years
  
  We will see how much they actually care in the next 2 years
  It's a show. The only thing established party leadership cares about on either side is lining their pockets. The longer they keep us arguing about their disfunction, the more they rob from us. One class. Working class.
  
  It's easy to obstruct when you have any 1 of the 3 (house of reps, Senate, or presidency). They have none. The only tool they have is the filibuster and we'll see what happens there.
- Democrats have exactly zero power outside of sitting back and watching.
  Jokes on the Republicans-- Democrats like to watch [their party get effed]. So republicans are giving the democratic leadership exactly what it wants. We win again.
- Democrats have exactly zero power outside of sitting back and watching.
  Good news! That's what they'd be doing if they had power too!
  /s
  We need a DNC chair that's not afraid to normalize primaries against Dem incumbents.
  Otherwise someone in Pelosi's district for example has no say in their representative, a bad incumbent would just deptess turnout until they die in office or a Republican flips the seat.
  When an incumbent is defended no matter what and has millions in dirty money from the last general it's not a fair primary.
  And for Dem voters, active primaries turn into increased general turnout because people are invested in the process.
  The issue is the DNC has been run by people who put "party loyalty" above all else, which sounds OK until you realize the loyalty isn't to voters, it's to donors.
  "Blue no matter who" doesn't work on Dem voters when they didn't have any say in the candidate. It's not uniting, it's blindly following. And Republicans will always be better at that.
  
  DNC needs to change how their primaries are run.
  Politics aside, no way some outsider like Trump would ever win a DNC primary because of how they run them vs the RNC. I think the Dems ignore voter wishes then surprise Pikachu face when the milquetoast establishment candidates don't get people fired up to vote.
  
  Not every single state, Washington went more left.
- The house can't do much, but the senate can use the same tactics Republicans did and block up everything.
  
  Until the GOP gets rid of the filibuster. Which will happen the nanosecond Democrats use it to block Trump's agenda. And then Senate Democrats can just pull up a spot on the bench next to the House Democrats so they can sit back and watch with them.
- I mean, there's always options, though if things start getting out of hand I suspect it'll be narrowed down to some rather extreme options
- Ha ha not Washington
But they did vote for this. Whenever I saw Trump speak, he always emphasized on how he will do tax breaks to the big corps. He never proposed a solution on how to help the working class people.
- His idea of "helping the working class" consists of tariffs that don't work the way he says they do and a very likely catastrophic mass deportation program.
  And people did vote for those somehow.
  
  Some of it yes, but the leopards face eating feast wouldn't exist if they actually got what they thought they were getting. They're just idiots.
- Less than half of all eligible voters voted. Yes, non voters essentially voted for Trump but it’s not the same thing as literally voting for and endorsing the dumb demented fat fascist.
  The majority of eligible voters are just morons that have been successfully distracted and confused (because they’re so dumb).
  There is value in the distinction, even tho that value may be quite small in context
  
  Non voters are even more dumb than Trump voters... at least Trump voters understand the very simple fact that there is power in voting.
  
  but it’s not the same thing as literally voting for and endorsing the dumb demented fat fascist.
  In a two party political system it is. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
  
  Less than half of all eligible voters voted.
  According to Ballotpedia it was 63.7% of eligible voters, which is a very good turnout by US standards.
  https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2024:_Analysis_of_voter_turnout_in_the_2024_general_election
  Still means that only about a third of eligible voters voted for Trump, but, y'know, that's really quite a lot.
- His idea on helping working class is blaming it all on immigrants.
But they did vote for it?
- Right? Like, this is who we are, and who we are is stupid and easily manipulated.
- You don’t get to vote outside of your own state for senators or representatives. Voting in your state doesn’t change the fact that other states have different priorities, and sometimes it feels like they’re just completely out of touch. My state has a Democratic majority in almost every part of our government, yet we’re still stuck with a president and federal government that most people here didn’t want or vote for. It's frustrating because the system lets other states have so much power in choosing the president, even when it doesn't reflect the will of people in places like mine.
- Add up the total votes from each state that voted for this and won. Exclude states that they didn't win in. It's about 10% of the total population of the U.S.
  
  That's a crazy system you have when 90% vote against something and they still win? You should fix that.
- The majority did not.
  
  The majority of people who showed up to vote did. Trump won the popular vote this time. The GOP were given control of every branch of government, and made gains in several state governments as well.
  
  The majority who didn't vote saw a cookie-cutter politician and an authoritarian man-baby and thought, "Eh, either is fine." So their "vote" went to the majority winner. There are no redos because not enough people showed up.
  
  This "but he didn't get >50% popular vote" is an ineffectual cop out. It does not matter in any sense. It's grasping at straws.
  
  But they did
A whole lotta dipshits voted for lower egg prices, or stayed home, voted their useless protest vote or outright voted for donvict, because "genocide joe" or whatever.
But we are all going to get this instead, I guess. It's not like many normal Americans were not warning them...Gaza and egg prices will be unaffected by donvict, maybe made worse by his fumbling idiocracy.
- Biden already said that the US doesn’t recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC. Aaaaand Kamala ran on a pro-fracking platform.
  I mean, jfc do you people have the memory of goldfish or were you just not paying attention in the first place? Proud to be one of the 13 million, personally. Have fun voting for Liz Cheney when she runs as a democrat in four years!
  
  Yes. They were flawed.
  Explain to me how Trump being President helps the Palestenians or the environment.ve4sus a Bid3n or Harris administration.
  Even if their policies were 100% in lockstep on Palestine and the environment (Trump will ABSOLUTELY be worse for both), there's a million other ways in which Trump is worse.
  You motherfucers who cast votes for third parties, refused to vote, or really did anything but vote for Harris were signing a fucking suicide pact for the rest of us while pretending you were taking the moral high ground.
  Everything that's coming is your fault. All the suffering, death, destruction - all of it. Your hands are bloody. It should keep you up at night, but your heads are so far up your own arrogant asses you no longer smell the shit you've spread.
  When you had the choice to put up meaningful opposition to fascism, you chose not to.
  Fuck you, now and forever.
  
  Thankfully, Biden is at least using his last hours in office to do something useful, like send Israel another $8bn in weapons.
  
  Centrists are getting the policies they want either way (especially the genocide) because they're conservatives. Blaming progressives is just posturing to make sure the next centrist dipshit they saddle us with is even more conservative.
Yes they did vote for it. They chose to ignore it because it was less important to them than [insert single issue] and they have blinders bolted onto their faces.
They absolutely did vote for this and sat on their asses and also didn't vote and voted for this.
Fuck you Americans, you wanted it, now we all get your shitty choices.
- Hey man i didn't vote for the assholes
  
  Too damn bad that's not how democracy works. You'll take what the idiots give us.
- Sadly, because of the US's imperial nature, it's not just going to affect them.
Unfortunately, the American people did.
- But we didn't. I voted for Harris but I expected this shit to wait until the inauguration to happen unless she won
  
  Unfortunately, a plurality of the electorate disagrees with us.
  As for the timing, it's normal for the rules for the incoming Congress to be put into place before the presidential inauguration. It's just abnormal for them to be so... shitty.
Welcome to the kingdom of north America. United States is dead, this is the new fiefdom, and king Elon and chancellor Trump don’t give a fuck what we think or want.
yes. yes, they did.
We didnt vote for a bottomless pit of our tax money to fund a racist-far rightwing genocide against Palestinians so Israelis can steal their land, either.
But here we are.
McGovern is cashing AIPAC's checks and voting how they say, so he knows exactly how this stuff works-- No need to play stupid. Eat a bag of ass, Rep. McGovern.
- For what it's worth Israel is buying most of the weapons. It's not bottomless tax payers money, although tax payers money does go to Israel that they use the buy weapons.
  But it's not like every headline about more arms to Israel is out of your pockets, but some is.
  It's still profiting from the situation though which is also terrible.
Oh yes, they did. They voted for propaganda. Everything else is gravy.
Yes they did.
- I think the point is that Elonia wasn't running in an election.
Yes they did.
You guys are so fucked lmao
They did vote for it and they are going to get what they voted for, good and hard.
They actually did vote for this with open eyes
Doesn't matter now they are in power. That's all they ever wanted.
They did with absolute certainty.
The responses here reaffirm to me how sweet this setup is for the rich. You've got two parties owned by the rich, with one willing to give a few minor concessions to the peasants, and the masses are stuck between them, but you better vote for the somewhat less bad party or else it's all your fucking fault that everything is bad. Seriously, is the strategy to demand the majority vote for a single party until the end of time? You've got to see how that's impossible under this system. It's a way to shift the blame off the broken system and to make it an issue of individual responsibility. Reminds me of people who bash the poor as lazy people who just need to "get a job".
Donate another 8 billion in weapons to Israel
Point angry finger towards Republicans
Yep it's Democrat time 😎
Most Americans did vote for this. Now enjoy what you sow.
- In countries where minority governments can rule this would be a valid reaction, but this is not the case here
  So what happened 2021-2023?
  Why do you think a simple majority means republicans can do anything they want, but when Dems had it, it wasn't enough to do anything?
  How do you rationalize how those two are different?
- Maybe power should be distributed

153 comments