Cite that the Constitution takes precedence over other references when it comes to interpreting the meaning of human language? 
This is just a hilariously silly digression, and that you appear to be taking it seriously brings me a hearty chuckle.
But seriously, let’s see that cite. Seriously, I mean it, because without it your argument is nothing.
I’m not referring to the meaning of human language. I’m talking about how our government works. Congress has passed very little of substance over the last 5 months.
P.S. I don’t buy into Humpty Dumptyism.
I disagree with you, but I will drop it so as not to continue a hijack.
Right, this doesn’t conflict with my post, which was about the portion of Congress controlled by Democrats – also known as the House of Representatives. Apologies if you were confused by it, but hopefully my meaning is now clear. Human language can be complicated, but luckily we can use that language to help resolve miscommunications and misunderstandings like this one. 
This may be my favorite post in my 15 years of being on the SD.
My only comment is, I hope you aren’t relying on news headlines to tell you what Democrats are spending most of their time on. Because the media love to talk about Impeachment. News about Congress voting on bills are not as popular. Especially when it’s a House bill that has no chance of becoming law.
Unfortunately the major national parties agree on more substantive issues including high government spending, entitlements, the failed drug war, domestic spying, mass incarceration, monetary intervention, supporting foreign despotism, and killing many foreigners.
So yeah good luck reforming them.
The (Democratic) House has passed over 200 pieces of legislation that McConnell has refused to allow to come to a vote in the Senate.
If you want to quibble that that is only the House and not the full Congress, you are technically correct, but your response made it appear that you were ignorant of the actual situation.
Sure you like Humpty Dumpty; you are equating letting McConnell set your meanings for “passing” by acting as though his ability to stop House action from being debated in the Senate with the House “passing very little of substance.”
House vs Congress: see above.
I’m positive the OP is thrilled to join the only party which can do absolutely nothing to fight the following:
Trump administration announces plans to expand hunting and fishing access in wildlife refuges.
Congratulations on your newfound party’s irrelevance and impotence.
Seriously? It’s clear that the whole point of posts #20 and #33 is that the Democratic party, (which is, after all, the focus of this thread, and whose supposed inaction is the OP’s misguided justification for changing party), on their side, are in fact active in Congress, and moreover precisely that Congress on the whole is not actually passing anything because the Republicans in the Senate are blocking at least what the Democrats in Congress are passing in the House. That’s the “knowledge” of those posts overall, if you bother to read them in good faith.
So no matter how misspoken that one particular statement might be, to belabor its parsing, and harp on just it alone, is a pointless and disingenuous distraction, having nothing to do with “knowledge.” Everyone knows that the bills are not getting passed by Congress overall. You’re not making some revelatory observation that isn’t already recognized by the overall discourse
More than a few Democratic candidates are campaigning against the drug war and mass incarceration (which can indeed go hand in hand to a point). And Democrats are overwhelming in favor of letting ex-felons vote (and some are in favor of letting current felons vote). There are a few who are against foreign despotism and foreign wars.
And of course both disagree on the type of high government spending and entitlements.
So that analysis seems very simplistic (at best).
You can’t be serious.
I’m not a democrat, but I’m as anti-republican as anyone, so by default that means I vote democrat a lot. But the democrats’ focus on identity politics is counterproductive. Kids today - their grandparents got to march for civil rights. Their parents got to march for gay rights. They want some great social struggle too. Civil rights and gay rights were right and noble, and worth the work and sacrifice, but this generation wants their struggle too, so now we’re fighting to the death over transgender bathrooms, and next up, whether being an otherkin is worthy of legal protection. You might think the last thing is a joke, but you aren’t tuned in to the “social justice warrior” vibes if you do.
Some of their motivations are possibly noble - they want to have their own good fight for justice - and some motivations are just vanity - they like pretending they’re oppressed or that they’re victims for one reason or another. But we’re making a bigger deal about progressively less important issues, and all it practically does is alienate people who think you’re going too far.
But the democrats seem to embrace this unimportant, divisive, losing shit - and you know why? Because they’re owned by the same corporations the republicans are, they just present a less corrupt, less insane version. So the democrats don’t want to market themselves on the obvious - to solve the issue of money being the dominant (and nearly only) factor in political power, to empower unions and the labor movement, to put checks on the power of large and powerful corporations, to basically do anything to improve the economic interest of poor people at the expense of the rich.
So instead of taking that winning route, that the vast majority of this country would benefit from and probably agree with, they instead focus on bullshit “identity politics” issues to try to sell themselves as being different from republicans without pissing off their rich masters.
There are a whole fucking lot of people who wish democrats would stop talking about transgender bathrooms and trigger warnings and would start talking about working class people and empowering labor and returning us to being a democracy.
It just seems ludicrous to me that anyone could possibly be worried about a vanishingly small number of progressives who focus on silliness (as opposed to legitimate social justice issues) when the most obviously harmful negative sort of “identity” politics today comes from Trump and Trump-allied white-grievance politics, ala Tucker Carlson and worse. You know, the ones that keep trying to downplay fatal shootings and other violence motivated by white supremacism and other forms of bigotry.
Very, very few Democrats (and none with any significant office that I’m aware of) spend any significant time “talking about transgender bathrooms and trigger warnings”. The vast majority of progressive advocacy today is for economic issues, health care, law enforcement reform, and other substantive issues that affect millions of poor and middle class voters. Even LGBTQ rights is largely substantive, and most of the talk about “transgender bathrooms” comes from regressive anti-trans bigots.
A priority, sure.
But I keep on running into this “nothing can possibly be more important than beating Trump” attitude, and that’s bullshit. Beating Trump isn’t an end in itself, it’s the ways we want to change this country and the world for the better.
If we beat Trump in a way that leaves us in no position to actually change anything, all that will get us is a year or two of respite while the world continues to get warmer.
Exactly. Trump is just a symptom. The disease is ignorance and hate, and it covered about 60 million people the last time, not 1. Getting rid of Trump won’t help if their next guy spouts the same nonsense and loots the till just as greedily. Getting his voters to stop being so eager to believe lies and indulge in hate is what will matter.
So your eighteen dimensional chess plan is
Can you fill me in on exactly what #2 is?
Seems right there in what you quoted. Win the Senate and don’t worry about the presidency this term. I don’t agree, but it’s not all that crazy if the Dems actually can do it. With both houses in Dem hands they can pretty much hog tie Trump and make him spend all his energy fighting them and accomplishing nothing. In theory, they could even prevent him from getting a new USSC appointment, basically using the same tactics the Republicans used to block Obama until Trump was elected.
Dang… I larfed!
I actually read the linked article and Levitz doesn’t seem to be at all saying that. He’s pointing out that it would be bad if we don’t take the Senate in 2020, which is true. So he’s saying that Dems should maybe be focusing more of our energy on the Senate races, which is meh; people always focus more on the Presidency.
But those goals aren’t in conflict. The best way to win the Senate is to nominate the best Presidential candidate we can to maximize Dem turnout, which obviously is also the best way to win the Presidency.
And IMO, if we do win the Presidency and not the Senate, the new President needs to be upfront from day one about managing expectations and sending the message that the 2022 Senate race begins on Inauguration Day. That’s why I worry about Joe Biden’s message about “bipartisan cooperation” and selling himself as the guy who can get Republicans to act like decent human beings. Sure, that may be what swing voters want to hear, but promising things you can’t possibly deliver on isn’t a good strategy except in the very short term.
IF I could choose one or the other I’d choose Senate … but reality is not only what you describe but that even with a focus on it and it alone winning the Senate is the heavier lift with the longer odds.
Other thing though is that a focus on winning the presidency as “the” thing is that it means mainly focussing on PA, MI, WI, and maybe on not taking MN for granted. Next maybe a bit into AZ to spread the map with a reach and alternate path.
Senate races that matter though are keeping VA, NH, MN, and MI, (give up Alabama) and flipping some of Colorado, Maine, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina and Texas. Assuming that the Ds keep all but Alabama they need four of those from the R list.
CO and AZ make sense to spend national resources and presidential nominee time in. NC too. But Maine is next least difficult to pick up and how much time and money should the D nominee spent there supporting the Senate challenger? And in the next longer shots, TX, GA, and IA?
Short version is that winning the Senate is important but poor odds even in a moderate D president win election with decent turnout, and you really want to be very careful about diverting any resources from assuring the more likely victory in the executive branch.