You think a Democratic President will give up the power of Trump’s unitary executive?
ICE will be abolished by executive order.
I think that most Americans, and in particular most Democrats, have a very warped notion of what constitutes “electable”. Many Democrats try to make themselves more electable by moving towards the middle. I’m pretty sure, though, that what drew a large chunk of voters to Trump is precisely the fact that he’s so extreme: They want extreme, and they don’t even care extreme what. So an extreme Democrat would actually be more electable than a “moderate”.
That used to be an ICE function, maybe. I doubt they’re doing anything at all about it any more. All the more reason to abolish them and replace them with something that does the actual useful parts of their job.
Not as much. But the trump administration has a lot to answer for.
Mind you this is getting a bit afield of the OP. Sure- which candidate has what views on ICE is entirely legit, but how to change INS/ICE is not quite.
It worked for several administrations, but as I said- the trump administration has a lot to answer for.
It would, unless some Dem candidate came out for it.
Well, Obama and Biden were middle of the road liberals, and so was Bill Clinton, also Carter and LBJ. The more radical Dem candidates have always lost- at least in my memory- Mondale, Dukakis, and especially McGovern, who was stomped badly. trump won as people were scared of inflation and he lied to them.
Harris, Hillary & Gore all came very close- and all centrist Liberals.
I think someone who is “extreme” in his level of support for the sorts of Liberal positions the Democratic base supports would do well. But someone who is “extreme” in the sense of supporting extreme positions, like a DSA type candidate, would be disastrous.
There’s a reason why such candidates haven’t won the Democratic nomination, and there’s a reason why those sorts of candidates underperformed compared to Kamala in the recent election.
That’s my hope.
But the idea that the U.S. is sliding into being some sort of long-term rotating elected dictatorship has crossed my mind. From my POV, it’s a terrible thought.
Is there any Democratic presidential nomination contender who has ever said this? Or are some of them planning to be a day one dictator without saying it in advance?
The latter. They will be a benign autocrat, unless you enabled the Trump regime. Then it’s hammer time.
Think about it; the partisan divide isn’t going away just because the pendulum swings. Democratic republics can only survive if most of the citizens believe in liberty and justice for all. If half the country believes only they are enitled to freedom, because they are superior to the out group, a republic cannot be maintained.
I believe the American experiment as we knew it ended on January 6.
This just seems like revisionist history. What was “radical” about Mondale or Dukakis? They were just liberals in a time when liberalism was out of fashion. McGovern was actually “radical” insofar as he took an unpopular, but absolutely correct, stance against the Vietnam War; I’ll count that as a legitimate case of “better for the Party to lose an election than to lose its soul”
I just keep hoping for somebody reasonably young. Obama could have waited until 2036 and would still have been younger than Trump and Biden. Regarding Newsom, I hope he has too much baggage going back to Covid if not earlier to keep him from getting anywhere.
WHOEVER gets the nomination, I just hope Democrats (leadership AND voters) can rally behind him or her and not straggle off in the name of some lame principle or other.
Democrats are not under the iron fist of control like the Pubbies are–hell, they are only allowed to buy toothpaste brands that are approved by trump! Democrats are like the little chicks that Lucy and Ethel tried to corral in Lucy’s living room.
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS FOR THE DEMOCRATS ULTIMATELY TO CONTROL THE W.H. AND BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS.
At this point in our history, it doesn’t matter who the President is as long as it’s 1) not trump, and 2) not a Republican. The Dems have to get back control of Congress and then, for fuck’s sake, work together!
Dream on…
Once that genie is out of the bottle, you can’t just choose not to use the power, because then the next Republican officeholder will use it, and we’re even worse off than we were before. The only sane response is to use the expanded power to reform the government, in such a way that the power is abolished for the next guy. Or if that’s not possible, then at least use it to do as much good as you can, while you can.
Democrats aren’t actually bad at this. Sure, there were a lot of people who supported Sanders over Clinton, say, but once Clinton was the nominee, they supported her. There are some who claimed that they were voting Trump out of protest of Sanders not getting the nomination, but those people were lying: They were always Republicans, and were never going to vote for any Democrat, no matter who it was. Had Sanders gotten the nomination, those same folks would have voted Trump “in protest that it wasn’t Clinton”.
What about those “progressives” who say they’ll vote Third Party if the wrong kind of Democrat is nominated? (And who did so in 2020 and 2024?) Are they lying, or were they always Republicans?
Lying, always Republicans, or trolls. Got any evidence that there’s a significant number of them?
Hasan Piker is an “Internet influencer”. That means that it’s literally his job description to say things that get attention. One effective means of doing that is saying stupid things, because stupidity always gets attention. It gets attention precisely because it’s not the norm.
Hasan Piker is the single largest content creator anywhere on the scale between left leaning and far left. His main channel alone has 3 million followrs. The only political content creator in that Gen Z space who is bigger is Asmongold, who is on the right (but with that “I’m an apolitical centrist” veneer that his ilk like so much). He’s extremely influential among young progressives. It would be a serious mistake to ignore that political sphere.
Now, to be fair, you originally said:
And I do have to admit that Hasan and his followers are not, in fact, Democrats. They don’t share the Liberal values of the Democratic party, and they don’t want what’s best for the Democrats unless they can jostle control of the Democratic Party. In a way, they’re a lot like the Tea Party was before their ideological successors successfully seized control of the Republican party with the rise of Trump and MAGA.
Go on BlueSky for an hour and you’ll find that among Hasan followers the position “if Gavin is the nominee I am voting third party” is in fact the norm.
If young progressives (or whoever it is that follows Piker) truly have that much influence, hopefully Democrats will nominate someone who can get their votes. It’s possible we can’t win without their support.
It’s this kind of stupidity that will see Republicans in control of this country forever.
In the same way that it was good for the Republicans to nominate Trump because traditional conservatives would not have won without the Trump voters, this would mean the destruction of anything worthwhile in the Democratic Party.
Hasan Piker literally and openly supports reeducation camps for supporters of capitalism. He is not our ideological ally. We should not destroy the Democratic Party in pursuit of voters like that.
Yes, I fear that attitude will cause Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in 2028 leading to a JD presidency.
First, “among Hasan followers” is a big bias in the data. Second, how many of the accounts saying that are voters, or even humans?
You can’t get reliable information just by reading social media comments.
I sincerely hope you are right and that these people are ghosts in the machine and not the burgeoning leftist version of the Tea Party. But I fear that they do exist, because I’ve met a number of people who repeat those same talking points in person, or seen real people I know post them on Facbook and other platforms where you go by your real name.
Further, I fear that even if they are just a foreign psyop (and I’d put good money on Hasan having foreign funding), their presence on social media might cause Democratic politicians to adopt policies that are incredibly unpopular in the real world which will lead to losing votes for the Democrats.
I think we need a law that makes every social media account show a country of origin (at the least) because I do think that botting is a real problem.
I don’t really know anything about Piker, and don’t accept cite-free assertions about him (or anyone else, really). I’m just saying if there’s a progressive influencer with tons of influence among young progressives, it would be better, all else equal, to get the support of his followers than not to. Even if your assertions about him are accurate, that doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t Democrats who his followers would support if they had the right messaging (that could also appeal to other Democratic voters).
I’m sure we could find a Democrat who Nick Fuentes voters would support, but as a Liberal I have zero interest appealing to an Illiberal community.
And if you’re wondering whether Hasan is “illiberal”, he calls people who are critical of his Newsom take “Shitlibs”, because “Liberal” is a slur to him.