Amen.
Representatives; any representatives, whether we voted for them or not, who aren’t actively working against our interests would be a start.
That sounds harsh, but it’s true; both parties take massive amounts of corporate money, and we’re all supposed to pretend it *doesn’t affect the bills they pass. You can’t serve both the interests of corporations and wall street, and the poor schmucks they’re exploiting on the bottom.
Slowly but surely everyone is realizing, whether at a conscious level or not, that the jig is up for representative democracy in America. We simply can’t compete with billions of dollars pumped into the DNC and RNC every election. Any issue in which big money interests have a stake, is one in which the people will not be represented.
That was the power of Trump, and Sanders for that matter. Trump promised to finance his own campaign as a billionaire (he didn’t, but most people fell for it). Sanders did raise money only from small donors.
And each, in their own way, promised to attack the establishment and “drain the swamp.” It was more or less inevitable that one or the other would win, because most people who aren’t in a top tax bracket realized long ago that their government doesn’t represent them, and were willing to grasp at straws hoping that someone would fix the problem.
Seconded. Before 2016 if people had said the US Republican party was one of the most dangerous organizations on earth, I would’ve thought they were being hyperbolic. But after electing Trump, they’ve shown they have no moral center, are not concerned with western values, welcome authoritarianism, are hostile or indifferent to the tenets of liberal democracy, etc.
People like that exist in every country, but usually they top out at 20-25% of the electorate. And normally they are a fringe movement, they do not take over a major political party.
When you combine the fact that the GOP is taken over by right wing authoritarians with the amount of military, economic and political power the US has, the modern GOP (or at least the white nationalist Trump base who have taken over the party) are a major threat now.
I hope our checks and balances hold up (I’m guessing they will, they’ve mostly worked so far) but after Trump leaves office I hope we follow Trump’s tenure by enacting 10-20 years of reforms to prevent the next Trump and their right wing authoritarian followers from destroying our democracy and peace of mind.
The fact that Roy Moore was held in check by checks and balances is also good to hear. Yeah, he is going to become a senator which sucks. But I think he was removed from the Alabama supreme court twice. So even in one of the most conservative states in the US, checks and balances are still working.
IIRC, the line that got repeated a lot after Trump’s election was that his supporters took him “seriously but not literally.” As in, the point wasn’t whether he was actually going to build the wall; the point was indicating that securing the border is a priority for him, that it’s important to him, that he (a) is at least willing to mention that he’s on the right side and (b) may do something, whereas his opponent – who, by contrast, is on the wrong side, and says so – will surely do nothing in that vein.
GO TEAM GO! RAH!
Everyone seems to be expecting a wave of popular demand for Trump’s removal and a steadily decreasing approval rate as his words and actions continue to get shittier and shittier, and his behavior crazier and crazier.
I’m not holding my breath. His approval was 40% on election day… it’s fluctuated between that and 35% over his first year. I don’t expect it to go much lower barring nuclear war.
Many otherwise rational people are completely consumed by team groupthink. As long as “their guy” won, everything must be going great. I fully expect the right to go to sleep for the next 4 years (or God help us, 8) with earplugs in, the same way the left went to sleep for 8 years while Obama drone-striked 7 countries, left Guantanamo running, persecuted whistleblowers exposing the surveillance state he was helping expand, and bailed out Wall Street while leaving 10 million homeowners to get foreclosed on - I could go on, but I’m depressed enough about Trump without reliving more failures from the Obama era.
Not everyone goes to sleep. Are you interested in learning the actual, complicated reasons behind Obama’s choices? It’s not nearly so cut and dried as you make your “both sides do it” argument. Far from.
If yes, please PM me. I’m not interested in derailing this thread or fending off those who have no intention of listening with an open mind. I am perfectly agreeable to having a discussion. Your comments lead me to feel you may not be in possession of all the facts, though I do agree with you about some of what you pointed out.
I would replace “liberal activism” with “neo-liberalism” but otherwise completely agree. Trump getting elected is a *symptom, not the disease itself.
Democrats have lost 1,000 seats nationwide since 2008. People are waking up to the fact that post-Citizens United, post-Occupy Wall Street getting shut down, the DNC no longer stands for anything other than some social issues (gay rights, minority rights, right to choose, transgender rights). That’s it. They gave up their fight for the unions a long time ago. They gave up their fight for the minimum wage. And Obama brilliantly highlighted how they’d given up the fight for healthcare by introducing a conservative healthcare plan crafted by The Heritage Foundation, and removing the public option from it voluntarily. He also exposed their corporate ties by giving massive bailouts to the banks while leaving 10 million foreclosed homeowners to twist in the wind.
Then there’s the fact that they used to be the anti-war party, but there hasn’t been a peep about it from Democrats in a decade. They’ve cheerfully continued drone-striking 7 different countries during Obama’s tenure, and seem to be dead set on reviving the Cold War with incessant red-baiting - there’s a Russian around every corner, and buying $200,000 in ads on Facebook is “an act of war.” I wish I could say this is hyperbole, but I’ve heard a lot of Democrats talking this way, and frankly, it scares the shit out of me almost as much as Trump poking and prodding North Korea and Iran.
The party has hollowed itself out by always running to a center that’s pulled farther to the right every year by Tea Parties and Trumpists. People on the far left such as myself despise them, and anyone with the mildest streak of red equally despises them. The only demographics they still have going for them:
- those affected by the civil rights struggles they haven’t abandoned
- people who are solidly centrist in their economic and foreign policy views - a segment of the population growing smaller by the day as our politics become increasingly polarized into far-left and far-right groups.
Humanity?
Charity?
Civility?
Maybe even…Christianity?
Gotta agree with this.
People are tired of politics, tired of ponzi schemes, tired of being told how they’re racist homophobes, tired of the whole mess, and were(and still are) hoping for different. People wanted someone who wasn’t a politician, who didn’t owe for their campaign funding, and wasn’t a snake. Every election is just choosing the lessor of two evils, and supporters are still clinging on to hope that Trump will #MAGA…
What I don’t understand is the right’s constant paranoia that poor folks might somehow not deserve the food stamps or other benefits that they might be getting. For cryin’ out loud, I WANT my tax dollars to go to feeding hungry people rather than to corporate welfare and the military so they can find better ways to kill people.
I mean, if someone is scamming for extra food dollars, you know it’s not much for what that pays out.
Whoever does that probably needs it, and their life probably sucks way worse than any whining GOP fathead’s.
I think a lot of people (who aren’t on the far right but think they are centrist) will admit we do not really have a left wing party in the US. The democrats are center right, the republicans are far right. People like Sanders are center left and are mostly marginalized. America doesn’t have a far left (a communist party).
So yeah, that demoralizes a lot of people. Had all the Sanders supporters who felt Clinton would be the same as Trump voted democrat, then Clinton would’ve won. But a lot of them felt like it’d just be more corporate triangulation.
America has serious problems that neither party has any interest in fixing due to regulatory capture and plutocracy. Overpriced, brutal health care. The banks are bigger and more unstable than they were in 2007. Growing income inequality and stagnant wages. Democrats had no problems passing the EFCA, which made it easier to join a union, in 2007 when they knew George Bush would veto the law. But once 2009 came around and they had supermajorities in both houses and Obama in the white house, they couldn’t get the votes to make it easier to join a union. Meanwhile after 2010 the GOP destroyed public sector unions.
Same with single payer in California. When Schwarzenegger was governor, and the democrats in the state assembly knew he’d veto it, they had no problems passing single payer. But now that they have supermajorities in both houses and a democratic governor, they can’t get the votes. They just wanted to grandstand without actually having to take on the rich and powerful.
Very well put with everything else above. Just wanted to add, CA actually managed to pass a single-payer healthcare system again, and this time the Democratic Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon killed it in committee:
They’re starting to pay lip-service to universal health care since so many are demanding it to get their vote, but when it comes to actually supporting it, they don’t dare, because they know where their campaign contributions come from and 90+% consistent incumbency rate makes a sound argument for ignoring the voters any time money’s involved.
For a reasonable amount of migration, sure. But unlimited? That’s madness. It also seems to be a desired method of long term demographic change to benefit the Democratic Party. The same party who considers a few Russian memesters an existential threat to the Republic.
That’s a ridiculous strawman. I don’t know a single conservative who wants to see poor people starve.
No one forced people on food stamps to make the poor life decisions they did. If they can’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps in America, that’s their problem. 
Preach!
But in all seriousness, the reality is more complicated. You can be for self sufficiency and a social safety net. Are there misanthropes on the right? Absolutely, but it’s a stretch to say the majority want fellow citizens to starve.
I’m on the right. I dislike unions and the minimum wage. However, I think a basic income would work. So, is that hateful?
I could see abolishing unions, and the minimum wage, if a universal basic income were implemented that could cover rent, food, and utilities. But given that cost of living prices are out of control, Hades will probably freeze over long before a single GOPer, and the majority of Democrats, agree to a UBI large enough to actually provide for anyone’s basic needs. So those will have to stay in place.
The average 3% higher wage for union workers and the $7.25 minimum wage isn’t much, but it beats the heck out of letting the bottom fall out of wages entirely. I make $14, twice the minimum wage, and where I live that covers basics plus approximately $300 a month in disposable income or so. I’ll retire comfortably in about 100 years.
UBI combined with a needs based safety net. But that’s a different thread.
There’s an excellent column by David Brooks in the NYT today. He’s a conservative and Republican, but one that I respect.
News Flash! Over 50% of Republicans are willing for hungry Americans not to starve. That’s happy news!
This is the key point. Right-wingers will prattle all day long about how they support UBI as long as no bipartisan UBI bill is on the table. (And don’t expect one in your lifetime.)
This gives them cover to support union-busting measures, fight against minimum wage, etc. since UBI obviates their need.
Thus musings by our cephalopod and others remind one of the stingy parents who don’t spring the bucks to let their kid ride a donkey nor ride an elephant. “As soon as we find a unicorn, Junior, we’ll buy you three rides on it.”