When Biden won in 2020, I distinctly remember saying, “Trump is going to win in 2024.” I saw it clearly. It wasn’t hard to predict.
Trump didn’t come from nowhere. Learn history. What we are experiencing now is not unique. Whenever wealth inequality gets too great, people demand action. And if those in power aren’t willing to move the needle and improve the lot of the working class, then they will turn to demagogues. This happens again and again in sclerotic democracies. It happened in Rome. It happened in ancient Greece. It happened in Revolutionary France. People turn to demagogues who promise to ram change through if they are not taken care of. Yes, it’s fucking obvious that Trump isn’t going to actually help the people. That’s the definition of a demagogue. Yet demagogues crop up again and again whenever democracies face the challenges we are facing now.
Democrats have proven themselves, time and time again, to not be willing to actually move the needle. Imagine if Biden had showed even half of Trump’s willpower, except for good rather than evil. Think of where we would be now.
This is why the choice was “fascism” or “slightly delayed fascism.” Kamala wasn’t going to meaningfully move the needle either. If she had won in 2024, Trump or another fascist demagogue would have won in 2028.
Merely holding the line is not a viable strategy. If you are running against fascism, and you refuse to do anything to meaningfully fight it when you win, you are responsible for getting that fascist elected.
Trump is responsible for his own sins. But Democrats are the reason he is currently in the White House. He’s doing the evil, but they are the ones who put him there.
Yeah that’s not how I see it. If we cheated like the republiQans, packed the courts with 15-year old fanatics for us, redrew all the maps against court orders, plowed billions into vote suppression and propaganda, we could end up with enough Democrats in Congress to get big things done.
We’d have done it fraudulently, as the republiQans have, but we’d all be better off.
Instead, we try to win honestly with well reasoned arguments and we lose by 1-3% every fucking time and have to govern with incompetent Qanuts who bought their seat with daddy’s chicken plant money.
Then a new crop of supergeniuses who just got out of polisci 201 light up a phattie and decide this is all part of the plan, man and we’re not gonna participate in this crooked show!
By the time they’re old enough and experienced enough to laugh at that, it’s been 20 years more of unrelenting Christian Nationalism and Gross Corrupt Incompetence.
I’m all for the Democrats Fixing It All (again) but saying they’re fascism-lite is stupid. We failed to elect them because we sat at home, and now it’s all on fire. As we’d spent the last year explaining it would.
If we cheated like the republiQans, packed the courts with 15-year old fanatics for us, redrew all the maps against court orders, plowed billions into vote suppression and propaganda, we could end up with enough Democrats in Congress to get big things done.
And they still wouldn’t, because they don’t want to. Not with the neoliberals in charge of the party.
The one thing – the one thing – that would’ve saved American democracy would’ve been the Democratic Party giving the middle finger to their crony-capitalist major donors and deciding to follow Sanders/Warren/AOC/etc. and meaningfully help the working class instead. But that was precisely the one thing that they abjectly refused to do.
Oh, sorry if it was unclear: that wasn’t referencing the “cheat” part; that was referencing the “get big things done” part.
Even with a Democrat supermajority, there would still be zero chance of meaningful reforms like ending Citizens’ United, instituting single-payer healthcare, Wall Street reform, increasing taxes on the rich, making college affordable, etc. as long as people like Pelosi and Schumer were still in charge. Neoliberals don’t want those big things to get done.
Somehow Democrats are always on the back foot even with the majority. It’s truly a wonder why people don’t believe them when they say they can do nothing to stop Republicans when they have been stopping the Democrats from passing things with a minority for a long time.
You’ll need to define “a long time” there. I don’t think it’s that long.
technically 1.5 years under Obama unless you know who Manchin and Lieberman are
technically 1.5 under Biden unless you know who Manchin and Sinema are.
Don’t insult people. Do not assume people are young or inexperienced. I’ve been voting for Democrats since 2008. And they’ve failed again and again. I fully understand why people would just throw their hands up and refuse to vote for the traitors. Don’t belittle people who are simply sick of the bullshit and decide “a pox on both your houses!” It’s not youthful inexperience, it’s disillusionment and exhaustion. People are fucking done with corporate dems. And honestly, the best long term strategy might be just to let the entire Democratic Party be burned to ashes.
We’re not the first country in modern times to fall to right wing autocrats. And one common thing? It’s not the captured opposition nominally liberal party that actually drives the autocrats out in the end. Usually the equivalent of the Democratic Party needs to be completely eliminated before the autocrats can be defeated. They suck up all the oxygen and prevent a real opposition party from forming. Typically, a popular front needs to be formed that completely sidelines and crushes the traditional liberal party and the autocrat.
Realistically, we are probably going to have to let the Democratic Party go the way of the Whigs. There’s really no other realistic way we end up defeating MAGAism. A feckless and useless opposition party is often far worse than no opposition party at all.
I think you’re right, and it really pisses me off to think about because the republicans were almost guaranteed to win no matter which candidate they put forward. Yet they picked Trump the traitor.
For the best really, if they had chosen a more competent candidate they could be doing a lot more damage with far less bad press and diplomatic fallout
Damn, I have tried at least a dozen times to write comments expressing that idea, and I still haven’t managed to phrase it that well. I think I’m just gonna start quoting you instead.
I’m glad you voted, but i don’t agree those were the two options.
I think it was a functioning government implementing more progressive policies vs. absolute shit-spewing catastrophic chaos.
And as that has already been borne out in the first, what, thirty seconds? Those people who refused to prevent it can get fucked.
Those really were the options though.
When Biden won in 2020, I distinctly remember saying, “Trump is going to win in 2024.” I saw it clearly. It wasn’t hard to predict.
Trump didn’t come from nowhere. Learn history. What we are experiencing now is not unique. Whenever wealth inequality gets too great, people demand action. And if those in power aren’t willing to move the needle and improve the lot of the working class, then they will turn to demagogues. This happens again and again in sclerotic democracies. It happened in Rome. It happened in ancient Greece. It happened in Revolutionary France. People turn to demagogues who promise to ram change through if they are not taken care of. Yes, it’s fucking obvious that Trump isn’t going to actually help the people. That’s the definition of a demagogue. Yet demagogues crop up again and again whenever democracies face the challenges we are facing now.
Democrats have proven themselves, time and time again, to not be willing to actually move the needle. Imagine if Biden had showed even half of Trump’s willpower, except for good rather than evil. Think of where we would be now.
This is why the choice was “fascism” or “slightly delayed fascism.” Kamala wasn’t going to meaningfully move the needle either. If she had won in 2024, Trump or another fascist demagogue would have won in 2028.
Merely holding the line is not a viable strategy. If you are running against fascism, and you refuse to do anything to meaningfully fight it when you win, you are responsible for getting that fascist elected.
Trump is responsible for his own sins. But Democrats are the reason he is currently in the White House. He’s doing the evil, but they are the ones who put him there.
Yeah that’s not how I see it. If we cheated like the republiQans, packed the courts with 15-year old fanatics for us, redrew all the maps against court orders, plowed billions into vote suppression and propaganda, we could end up with enough Democrats in Congress to get big things done.
We’d have done it fraudulently, as the republiQans have, but we’d all be better off.
Instead, we try to win honestly with well reasoned arguments and we lose by 1-3% every fucking time and have to govern with incompetent Qanuts who bought their seat with daddy’s chicken plant money.
Then a new crop of supergeniuses who just got out of polisci 201 light up a phattie and decide this is all part of the plan, man and we’re not gonna participate in this crooked show!
By the time they’re old enough and experienced enough to laugh at that, it’s been 20 years more of unrelenting Christian Nationalism and Gross Corrupt Incompetence.
I’m all for the Democrats Fixing It All (again) but saying they’re fascism-lite is stupid. We failed to elect them because we sat at home, and now it’s all on fire. As we’d spent the last year explaining it would.
And they still wouldn’t, because they don’t want to. Not with the neoliberals in charge of the party.
The one thing – the one thing – that would’ve saved American democracy would’ve been the Democratic Party giving the middle finger to their crony-capitalist major donors and deciding to follow Sanders/Warren/AOC/etc. and meaningfully help the working class instead. But that was precisely the one thing that they abjectly refused to do.
So - serious question - would you want to? Cheat.
Oh, sorry if it was unclear: that wasn’t referencing the “cheat” part; that was referencing the “get big things done” part.
Even with a Democrat supermajority, there would still be zero chance of meaningful reforms like ending Citizens’ United, instituting single-payer healthcare, Wall Street reform, increasing taxes on the rich, making college affordable, etc. as long as people like Pelosi and Schumer were still in charge. Neoliberals don’t want those big things to get done.
Somehow Democrats are always on the back foot even with the majority. It’s truly a wonder why people don’t believe them when they say they can do nothing to stop Republicans when they have been stopping the Democrats from passing things with a minority for a long time.
You’ll need to define “a long time” there. I don’t think it’s that long.
technically 1.5 years under Obama unless you know who Manchin and Lieberman are technically 1.5 under Biden unless you know who Manchin and Sinema are.
Don’t insult people. Do not assume people are young or inexperienced. I’ve been voting for Democrats since 2008. And they’ve failed again and again. I fully understand why people would just throw their hands up and refuse to vote for the traitors. Don’t belittle people who are simply sick of the bullshit and decide “a pox on both your houses!” It’s not youthful inexperience, it’s disillusionment and exhaustion. People are fucking done with corporate dems. And honestly, the best long term strategy might be just to let the entire Democratic Party be burned to ashes.
We’re not the first country in modern times to fall to right wing autocrats. And one common thing? It’s not the captured opposition nominally liberal party that actually drives the autocrats out in the end. Usually the equivalent of the Democratic Party needs to be completely eliminated before the autocrats can be defeated. They suck up all the oxygen and prevent a real opposition party from forming. Typically, a popular front needs to be formed that completely sidelines and crushes the traditional liberal party and the autocrat.
Realistically, we are probably going to have to let the Democratic Party go the way of the Whigs. There’s really no other realistic way we end up defeating MAGAism. A feckless and useless opposition party is often far worse than no opposition party at all.
I think you’re right, and it really pisses me off to think about because the republicans were almost guaranteed to win no matter which candidate they put forward. Yet they picked Trump the traitor.
For the best really, if they had chosen a more competent candidate they could be doing a lot more damage with far less bad press and diplomatic fallout
Damn, I have tried at least a dozen times to write comments expressing that idea, and I still haven’t managed to phrase it that well. I think I’m just gonna start quoting you instead.