Oh no…the Leopards ate my face thread

As I said, those parts of the past 40+ years that democrats held significant electoral power. That's my tine frame.

I'm saying that the past few years of Biden administration or the specific period when Obama was in power, (either before or after the first midterms), can't be viewed in isolation. They're part of the developing story of how the democrats have governed over an extended period and particularly how they're prioritised corporate interests over those of the working class.

 

If you are well off or just comfortable this is not a losing position.

 

So when people vote for democratic presidents they have no power to, (for example), prosecute wrongdoing and apparently they can't even pass laws to make those things illegal or, if they DO, they'll largely continue the same levels of inequality so won't make any difference to the working class democratic voters, so what's the difference.

Also, if people DO vote democrat the democrats will do exactly what's required ... half the time and as long as the donors... er, the job creators ALSO get theirs

Yep, that will guarantee the working class get off their arse to vote democrat. What could go wrong?!

 

I'm not sure what time this was. With the exception of Clinton who was the American version of New Labour, the Democrats hadn't ruled since Ian Curtis was alive.

 

Two things:

1. It was never about "men playing in women's sports".
2. People here continue to ignore the evangelical mindset. They simply don't accept the humanity of LGBT+ people. When reading all the conversations about what happened with the election, the future of this country, etc., evangelicals are not front and center. They should be. [edit: evangelicals have been openly planning all this since the late 70s or 80s, and yet they are not front and center in the analysis.]

 

FTFY

When it comes to choosing a candidate to vote for, yeah, it's a distinction without a difference.

 

And the people you don't like are almost always less comfortable than you. It's downpunching no matter how you look at it.

 

They're ignoring it like they're ignoring race. even here, we've got several posters going all around the world trying to explain what any mouthwash-drunk homeless Black man could have told him. It's the exact same thing.

 

Well, Clinton, essentially but also the democratic response to Reagan's and GHW Bush's rule which seemed to consist of saying, 'We agree' to pretty much every bad idea the then president came up with. When Clinton got in we had NAFTA but that was only the endpoint of a long process that started under Reagan IIRC.



This is actually similar to how the formation of the WTO and neoliberal policies was led by British conservatives, (including Thatcher, of course)...

https://www.theguardian.com/global-...6/margaret-thatcher-impact-legacy-development

That was then enthusiastically adopted by 'noo labor' under Blair.

Reich says that these things are neither good nor bad in themselves but without significant efforts to protect those at the bottom they will suffer falls in their living standards, particularly measured in terms of their relative positions.... that's what's happened.

The situation is broadly the same over here where we had to get to the point of 14 years of tory misrule before people got to the point of saying, 'Ah screw it... let's give the other lot a chance'.

In the states it seems you have to have an actual fascist as the alternative threat in 2020 and now we find out even THAT isn't a reliable method in 2024.

 

And when you consider that the place on the continuum where right-wing evangelicals blur into Christian Nationalists, you find a whole bunch of white supremacists (aka the people who were just elected).

 

But it's not just that they can't prosecute people. They apparently can't, (or won't), appoint someone to investigate wrongdoing unless it's some milquetoast and ineffective individual like Garland, (who, IIRC Obama suggested for the SC), and they also can't implement changes to the laws to make white collar crimes more risky.

So the question is, how much impetus will people have to vote for them, particularly low information voters who don't pay much or any, attention to politics.

 

Democratic unified control with a majority capable of pushing through senate legislation on party lines has happened for about four months in the last twenty years (January 2009 until Ted Kennedy went on leave in early June until he died and was ultimately replaced by a Republican for the rest of his term). The 111th is considered the congress which was the most productive since the 89th (the civil rights congress, also a Democratic trifecta with Democrat supermajorities).

There has been no other period of "Democrats being in power" sufficient to drive an agenda to any significant extent.

 

Good, we agree then... they're so useless they can't even appeal to the public for more than a few months in several decades

 

The irritating guy has a take on what went wrong, (at 4:13 I think)...



Yeah, he's still irritating.

 

That's broadly correct but, as was said at the time, maybe it should have been illegal to use other people's money to bet to that extent.

This is like a politician making robbing banks legal and then complaining when you lose your money in a bank robbery that 'There's nothing we can do about it'

Y'know, it's technically correct, but...

The thing is this was all known before the GFC as well and they didn't even argue for things to address the issue at the time, at least, not to any real extent.

 

Well, now you are conflating political power to public appeal. Don't be daft.

You know very well, that due to the Senate and Electoral College, the 55/45 popular split in this country is often governed by the minority.

 

All we've done is require better balancing of books.

I would have preferred that banks be greatly restricted in this kind of deal making, and for it is still allowed to be more regulated and have more oversight.

I'd like to also see some sort of rule passed where negligence by C-suites results in clawing back of ridiculous pay packages they receive. That's murky though.

Anyways.....

 

I've been saying for decades that mainstream America isn't good enough for what most Dems believe in.