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  • She was on the left end of the Senate. If she is a moderate, so is the whole democratic Senate.

    She could prove me wrong, but there is a lot of evidence that she is more progressive than Biden, who was already much more progressive than we thought when we all held our noses and voted against trump in 2020.

  • There is no shame anymore. Or maybe there is too much shame, and people repress thinking about it because it's too painful.

    We live in a democracy. We have a representative from of government. These elected officials represent us, they reflect our values. Yes, even if we did not vote for them. Your neighbors are not aliens or NPCs. They are your community.

    I cannot contenence choosing to not vote and pretending you are not a part of it all. Long ago I came to terms that many of my neighbors wish I did not exist. I'm trans, and they wish I would stay inside a closet, a basement, or a grave. I take comfort that many others recognize my humanity and celebrate my achievements.

    Our government reflects our values. If you don't like that, then work to change it. Tea partiers did, and they shifted an entire party towards racism and authoritarianism. Maga fans a Qultists worked to make the country reflect their values and now Vannce has a chance to turn the white house into the Handmaid's Tale.

    If that happens then it's our fault. I can't pretend that people are not my neighbors just because they think I'm a groomer or a predator no matter how wrong they are. Neither can anyone else pretend that the electorate is not voting for dictatorship.

  • I actually disagree. Removing it is a democratic idea. We already have 2 houses of Congress which must agree to pass legislation and the president must sign it unless Congress can muster a supermajority.

    Any voter has had 4 chances in the ballot box to represent their interest, we do not need to set artificially higher standards to prevent legislation from passing.

    If voters sow the wind by electing lawmakers that support reckless or harmful policy, then voters should reap the whirlwind that results.

  • Harris healthcare plan in 2020 was to the left of Bidens, She called for Medicare for all. She dissagreed with Bernie about banning private insurance.

    She was not against universal healthcare. I doubt she is now. If Dems sweep the house and somehow picked up 10 seats in the Senate (impossible) she might try to go for it.

    It's not impossible in 2026 for Dems to make big gains in the Senate, but it is very, very unlikely.

  • Then why are you here?

    If you don't believe in electoral politics that's fine. But you should be off organizing union drives, or mutual aid societies, or literally any other venue for democratic power.

    Why would you care which corporate shill holds office?

    Your presence here suggests that it does, in fact, matter who wins elections, or which team holds power.

  • I disagree, republicans don't let the filibuster stop them when they want to do something.

    They can still pass their tax cuts because of reconciliation and they immediately changed the rules to lock in the supreme Court.

    Classic example of Democrats pretending the other side has a respect for rules and tradition.

  • Manchin wasn't even in the Senate yet. Lieberman was an independent that endorsed Romney 3 years later.

    There were senators from Louisiana and Missouri in that majority.

    Also Franken wasn't seated until like June because of recounts and lawsuits. Ted Kennedy was on deaths door and passed away 2 months later. His replacement was seated a couple months after that and then Scott Brown won in fucking Massachusetts in January.

    They ended up with something like 109 working days in which Democrats could override a Republican filibuster. They passed 2 major pieces of legislation. Dodd Frank and the ACA.

  • If they do their jobs well, they get rewarded with votes. It’s a simple question of not inverting the relationship between the public servants and the public.

    Hard disagree. The public is not a monolith. It does not know what it wants, because most people want mutually exclusive things.

  • You could instruct the federal agencies to ignore court rulings, effectively undoing Marbury vrs Madison.

    That's a constitutional crisis, but what is the court gonna do? Call the FBI? Send in the military?

    You can ask the Cherokee people what the court does with an uncooperative federal government, but you won't find any in Georgia.

    Maybe that's just fascism with our side in charge though.

  • It was a terrible decision, but only in hindsight. She was a popular governor and a political outsider, even by Alaska standards.

    But she let the proto tea party get to her and just ran with her worst instincts.

  • Mcain's primary win was a rebuke of Bush. McCain lost to Bush in the 2000 primary. He ran again in 08 and that time he got it because he represented a different "maverick" path from Bush's Neoconservatism.

    McCain was also a neoconservative, but his brand was a straight shooting veteran with principles.

    But the voting base wanted more change than that. McCain was still a Republican. The people wanted the Opposite of Bush, as seen in the down ballot races giving Dems a supermajority. People were predicting the end of the Republican party in 2009.

    We all know how that turned out. But at the time it seemed transformational.

  • Change from what?

    What did people want to change?

    What was wrong that we all wanted to change..... Away.... From?

    Yeah it was deliberately vague bullshit, but I was there. We wanted to change away from Bush and war and bigotry and callous disregard for our fellow citizens.

    Obama's genius was retorical, not substantial. This country doesn't know what it wants because we have vastly different ideas about what would be best even inside the Democratic party, let alone independents and Republicans. Laying out specific policy goals is mostly a trap. Because whoever you piss off cares a lot more about that than whoever you please.

    Trump does the same thing by vomiting so much bullshit that voters can imagine he will give them whatever their hearts desire is because he said he would at some point. He won't, but his voters are mostly already praying to a sky angel so they have a lot of experience projecting love and benevolence for them onto a distant figure that doesn't care about them at all.

  • Manchin could have switched parties anytime during his 18 years in office. He was a godsend when he ran the first time, and he's been a godsend ever since.

    He's a piece of shit human, but he was the only democratic candidate with a chance at victory in West Virginia. His has been 85% better than any Republican that would have held his seat otherwise and it is infantile to pretend otherwise.

    Manchin is infuriating, but he is no Sinema. He holds his office in a red state getting redder, not a pink state turning purple. He sometimes represents the wrong headed desires of his constituents and I can't hold that against him. Far more often he has voted for the best interests of the country.