Sure, and I think even Schumer voted against the bill- he just let the filibuster die.
Which made voting against the bill a meaningless noise; because he knew it would pass.
And I meant that considerably more than 20 voted against cloture.
Not at all. If you vote for a bill, you get the blame.
If you vote to allow a bill to proceed, when you didn’t have to, you’re responsible for that, too. And can be blamed for it.
The Bezos Post is now warning Democrats not to rebel against their leaders, which makes me even more certain it’s the right idea.
No, because you are not voting for it to proceed- you are simply not stopping it.
An opinion piece in The Washington Post urged Democrats to avoid making the same mistakes conservative Republicans did when they created the Tea Party in the 2000s
Uh, mistakes? Republican legislators eat each other alive constantly and they’re running the whole country.
A distinction without a difference in this case. Voting yes on cloture and no on the bill still means you voted to pass the bill.
That opinion piece is from Ramesh Ponnuru. Wiki:
Ramesh Ponnuru is an American conservative thinker, political pundit, and journalist. He is the editor of National Review magazine, a contributing columnist for The Washington Post,[1] and a contributing editor to the domestic policy journal National Affairs.[2] He has been a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute since 2012.
Ponnuru isn’t alone. Over at the NYT David French’s OpEd piece has the headline, “The Last Thing Democrats Need Is Their Own Tea Party”. David French represented dozens of Tea Party organizations in the past.
While conservative pundits appear both unanimous on this and faintly ridiculous, liberal pundits tend to frame the topic around whether Schumer was correct or not. They prefer to discuss policy and strategy rather than tribalism.
Not true at all. Because when you go back on the record- you can show your constituents you voted NO!
If you think your constituents are stupid, that is.
Maybe you could’ve gotten away with that in a time before the internet and the 24-hour news cycle, but not now.
I agree with Smapti. One of my friends believed Trump was evil. For reasons he never explained, he was unwilling to votr for Harris. He chose not to vote at all. He said this meant that whatever happened, he was not responisble.
He knew Trump was evil and chose not to do the one thing that could have stopped him. He is absolutely responsible.
Schumer voted no on the bill. He knew it would pass anyway. His options were either vote for cloture or allow the bill to pass. He did the second.
Voting for cloture is voting for it to proceed.
Only if they weren’t paying attention.
And if your opponent decides not to make a point of your having voted for it to proceed.
Plus which – I’ve about had it with politicians doing things based not on whether they’re a good idea, but on whether it’s likely to get them re-elected. That’s what got us into this damn mess in the first place; all the Republicans deciding that the only thing that mattered was whether they got re-elected.
That seems like a shot across the bow to me.
It’s a fantastic sound bite, but I’m not so sure Gallego isn’t going to turn out to be another Sinema: Ruben Gallego Holding Fundraiser with Marc Andreessen, Matt Yglesias
Honestly, you go to war with the army you have. When someone is primaried, it doesn’t help in the general election. Admittedly, Fetterman should probably step down anyway before 2030 due to health issues.
Whenever I see someone left of center on twitter or bluesky attacking the Dems harder than the GOP, I tend to think a) their expectations are wildly off kilter for a 2 party system and b) if they are so progressive, what are they doing to push the ball forwards? The Dems job is to govern and get elected. Yes, politicians can move the public opinion needle, but so can the citizenry.
John Fetterman is basically voting with Republicans and serving Trump’s agenda under the guise of being a Democrat. Frankly, this kind of mealy-mouthed, “We mustn’t criticize our own regardless” attitude is how the Democrats became the ‘Shit Lite’ party, essentially abandoning writ large any kind of progressive ideals or support for the working class in order to promote a Reagan-esque agenda and pursue that sweet, sweet corporate donor cash, as effectively blocking any campaign finance reform as Republicans. There is no reason for and no benefit to passing off Fetterman as being of any utility to Democrats or ignore how he is trying to normalize the burgeoning authoritarianism and wholesale destruction of democratic institutions in the name of keeping the peace.
Fuck that hypocritical asshole.
Stranger
They are getting elected, but they are not governing. I know they’re not in power, but they ARE supposed to be the opposition, and show everyone how things will be different when they are. And they are getting elected by chasing the swing voters and ignoring the left, which is how the Overton window got where it is.
That ship sailed during the 1970s, following Buckley and Valeo (1976), which held that limits on campaign expenditures were unconstitutional. That’s not the way it works in Britain for example. Because of expenditure limits, the emphasis during campaigns is on resource management rather than fundraising.
Some Democrats tried for decades to run on a “I don’t accept PAC money” platform. Those Dems were selected out over time. Unions don’t have a large enough pot of money, because of declines in membership.
To give you an idea of the huge influence of Buckley consider that Mitch McConnell wrote opinion pieces during the 1970s in favor of campaign finance reform. Mitch McConnell! By the late 1990s, he was blocking any attempts to reform campaign finance (which were necessarily mild due to Buckley). Today we have further barriers in the form of the unpopular though still binding Citizens United decision.
If the Dems unilaterally surrendered on the campaign finance front, the result would be a permanent loss of power. This century the corrupt and corrupted Supreme Court decided that money is speech, speech is protected by the first amendment, and therefore money is protected by the first amendment. There are ineffectual mumblings about a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, but there are crickets regarding Buckley. So no, as long as we have a 2 party system and a corrupt SCOTUS, corporate influence on both parties is baked in.
Which only highlights the failures of our business community. Fascism is bad for business, but our corporate overlords have pivoted to the stance that this isn’t their concern and they shouldn’t speak out against it. Those who shout loudest for money being speech are also the most reclusive with regards to the press.