The Democrats are cowards and fucking terrible politicians. They’re also owned by big money as much as the Republicans.
The entire US Congress except like 4 people needs to fucking go. Not just Schumer.
That's a fair point. Almost seems like a two-party system is fundamentally flawed.
Yeah it’s part of the problem. I think it’s exacerbated by the fact that the US basically legalized bribery with Citizens United.
More legalized. Lobbying was already legalized bribery. Citizens United was just them making sure they get to pick who they bribe.
Fairness doctrine being abolished was the end of America.
People give the fairness doctrine too much credit; First it’s partially responsible for the current mentality of all opinions matter no matter how stupid. But more importantly it only ever applied to broadcast TV and Radio, not cable or satellite, or the Internet. So it never would have applied to Fox News, for instance.
It's not a silver bullet, but it was a very useful way to ensure people didn't become radicalized by just listening to one side lie constantly. There's a reason why Reagan and Nixon wanted it gone, and we're living through the repercussions of not having it now; radicalized far right extremists everywhere and in control of the government. Also, we could have made updates to expand it or introduce new legislation to curb extremism on other platforms.
Definitely far from perfect but better than our current reality.
On the contrary, lots of people were radicalized by hearing people like new age healers given the same airtime as medical doctors.
It’s taken 20 years to fail at making the publicly funded internet a utility. The purpose of the doctrine was to govern publicly owned airwaves. I strongly believe it would have been and is impossible to expand the FCCs jurisdiction to include privately owned networks. I also strongly believe that the current administration would abuse the fuck out of these regulations.
It’s one bullet point on a long list that got us here. Installing a Christian nationalist dictatorship has been the right’s goal for 50+ years.
They’re also owned by big money as much as the Republicans.
Idiotic takes like that are as much of the problem as anything else.
Holy hell, the number of know-nothings who upvoted that nonsense...
If you don't think the Dems and MAGA serve the same Sociopathic Oligarchs, you are delusional.
They are like the management tier in your workplace. Some managers are pretty cool, and some are terroristic assholes who make every moment at work agonizing. But despite the difference in approach, they both want you to toe the company line, and put the company's interests ahead of EVERYTHING. Nice or not, they both want to enslave and exploit you on behalf of the company.
We'd all rather work under the nice manager, but if we really want to make the workplace work for the workers, then we have to make the managers fear the workers enough that they appeal the top. That's unlikely, and eventually we will be forced to bypass them, and take our grievances to the top ourselves.
Yes, there's a point to what you're saying, but to paint with the same broad brush upon them both is not only delusional at best, but in real-world terms, actually toxic in terms of influencing voting bases. Shame on you.
Just look at the public voting records of Congress going back ages, and see how Dems (warts and all) actually do the right thing most of the time. Decade after decade...
When people bang their drums upon 'money playing a part of politics' being outrageous, unexpected and 'breaking the system,' what they're really saying is that they fundamentally don't understand capitalism... the very system they grew up in.
"Both sides being the same" is beyond an idiotic, false narrative, and any decent history or political scholar can tell you just that. It's the message of dictators and oligarchs really, upon close examination.
There may have been more difference in the past, but after watching the Dems do literally NOTHING to blunt MAGA's return during the entire Biden administration, and almost helping them take back the country. Biden put the case in the hands of his AG, and he managed to find the most unmotivated REPUBLICAN of all time to do the job, who gave them a 2 year head start. The Dems deserve a significant amount of the blame.
The Dems obviously don't want to make things to difficult for the Sociopathic Oligarchs. Look at the last shutdown. They let people lose their food assistance for a few weeks, but the minute it started to hit the airports, and the corporations couldn't move their operatives around, the Dems folded within 48 hours, and surrendered with absolutely nothing in return.
Either the Dems are in cahoots, or they are cowardly and negligent. Either way, the result is the same, so who cares if there is a technical distinction?
Fun fact Chuck Schumer doesn't even pretend that he works in favor of his Democratic constituents. No Chuck Schumer's entire career is based off of serving the needs of the Baileys. A fictional couple he invented that he bases all of his ideals rhetoric and legislation around. They are Republican. Look this up if you never heard before it's the weirdest fucking thing.
How does/did Schumer, Grassley, Graham, Pelosi, McConnell, Feinstein, and so on, stay in power? I always get downvoted and naysayed when I say this, but American voters fucking suck. Just the absolute worst. People will blame the two party system, and they do have a point there, but those same people don't show up in the primaries to make a difference. They're too scared to vote for change, as they've shown over and over. Just a bunch of ignorant, self-satisfied, cowards.
Major chunks of the country will always vote for the same party. That's why you hear talk about blue states and red states. He's in a safe area, so he has a negligible chance of losing even if he does a terrible job.
They're the party of the status quo. They'll probably take 50 years to reinstate the rights lost by this administration.
.. because he was elected.
The simplest explanation is that the oligarchs have assured him he'll continue getting his salary if he continues being ineffective.
His job is U.S. Senator, which he holds because he received the most votes from the state of New York. “Senate Minority Leader” is a position he holds because no one else wants it. It’s not a Constitutional position, like Speaker of the House or President of the Senate, and the U.S. Senate is a house of equals. Being “minority leader”bestows no added power, only responsibility for representing his party when negotiating with the other party. If another Senate Democrat wants to be responsible for negotiating with a senile man-child, they can call for a vote whenever the minority caucus meets.
And like Pelosi, he received the most votes from the state of New York because, "That's our guy!" We gotta fight these people where they live.
Mitch McConnell had the game down pat. He'd campaign like hell in Kentucky, be damned what the rest of the US thought of him. He's shaken the hands of 10s of thousands of little old ladies who say, "That Mitch sure is a nice man!" (got that last bit from an article about how he worked his campaigns, not making it up)
Jesus, if lemmy only knew about Orrin Hatch or Robert Byrd (KKK member!). 🙄 Those dirtbags lasted for decade after decade after decade by appealing to their constituents, not the US as a whole.
Former House Speaker Tip O'Neill: "All politics is local."
Side note, Mamdani has this game figured out! Except he went out and listened to his voters, of all sorts. Fascinating man to watch. No talking points shoe-horned in as replies, no sound bites, legitimate listening skills and answers. Bill Clinton was such a master. We will watch his career with great interest!
which he holds because he received the most votes from the state of New York
Technically?
What do you mean?
Technically, he's in office because he won an election. But he did that by being in the pocket of numerous lobbies and in the good graces of the Democrats' campaign operation. If you don't do those things, your odds of winning are vanishingly small. So he's borderline untouchable.
Oh, the other Democrat candidates withdrew and no other parties are popular:
https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_Senate_election_in_New_York,_2022
I would expect lobbies to play a decent part in this but I'm not sure I've seen the mechanics fleshed out.
As a voter in New York, what are the options coming up to the next election that help remove him and impede the far right groups?
How did Mamdani take NYC against a filthy-rich opponent (Cuomo) with literal billionaires and the national conservative machine standing against him?
AOC was a bartender and took her House seat, untouchable now.
Obama was a nobody from Illinois. People heard him speak at the 2004 Democratic National Convention (me included!) and jumped onboard.
Clinton took the Presidency as an unheard-of governor of a hick state nobody cared about. And a Democrat in that state no less!
They all did it without big money, against wealthier opponents and won by talking to their people and listening. The formula works.
because the capitalists like him there
The fact of the matter is that if Democrats had been elected, there would have been no invasion of Venezuela, nor Iraq two decades ago.
Let us not kid ourselves. Non-voting eligible American voters let trump take the reins again, with control of Congress and the Supreme Court, knowing he could pull shit like this at any moment, yet still sat on their lazy asses TWO Election Days, fondling their purity, bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL, and now they're like... "C'mon Schumer... dazzle me and my most excellent purity over here!"
Elections have huge consequences, so spare us the righteous outrage. Whatever blood gets spilled, it's also on those soft, tender, lily-white hands of non-voting deadweights.
Also, twice is a pattern: "Vote for a woman?!! Me?!! When PIGS FLY!!!"
There hasn't been a single war that the DNC hasn't been bloodthirsty to get into. Iraq was bipartisan and Biden expanded the bounty on Maduro to $25m. House Democrats just gave $8b more in funding than what was requested for war.
It’s pretty simple really he gets money from Israel and the oligarchs to pretend he’s opposed to things in the weakest and least convincing way possible. He’s doing a good job at the job of pretending to be opposed to facism while preventing any movement left so he continues to get paid to do that.
This is, sadly, how it seems to be. Both he and Hakeem Jeffries seem to obstruct real opposition from the Democratic Party against Trump and the Right in any meaningful way.
It's every democrat since Clinton and every Republican since Reagan. Carter was the last real president this country had.
His job is to lose and stall when instructed to by nazis, and he is a goddamn genius at doing it (though a dumbass for failing to see how dumb it is to do that)
Point is, he's doing his job: losing.
Are we talking about Chuck Schumer or Mike Johnson?
The problem is simple. Congress and Senate treat their job like jobs. Not sworn duties.
At the end of the day they don't give a damn about the USA and will always accept checks from special interest.
When you consider that the Democrats' job is to offer only token resistance and lose elections, you realize he's doing his "job" very well.
AFAIK he was OK during Trump's first term, back then it was Pelosi holding back.
Now he is making the same mistakes Pelosi did.
Mistakes, yes. Unintentional, no.
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