Voting rights are the most important thing to focus on right now. This is perfectly fine, assuming they get the voting rights passed. Unfortunately, the bill won't be as strong as it should.
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Senate expected to shelve Build Back Better bill in favor of Voting Rights push
- Thread starter Shard Shinjuku
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Biden sucks at messaging, full stop. I have no idea what his administration is doing day-to-day as someone who is reasonably involved in politics. Even disregarding the messaging though, what the hell is he actually doing? Like how do you just restart student loans without any sort of attempt, at the bare minimum, to reduce student loan interest and minimum payments. It's insane. He's asleep at the wheel.
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So because he has no chance he's actively willing for nothing to pass so his legacy is mired in failed legislation? 🤨
I think what worries me is, if you think it's hard for people like us to manage who want to make good things happen generally and are paying attention, imagine how hard it's going to be for the average voter who's plugged in only for CNN voicebites and has no clue about greater issues and platforms and sees each candidate as a new character to pick in an RPG lol.
They are giving up on BBB, the one that has any chance of actually passing and now it won't as everything is pushed and will be forgotten about, election season starts early next year and that's where the attention will be all the way to the fall, it's over.
You're good, no need to apologize. It's definitely hot button! I'm upset enough at the Dem party blowing this congress, but people pointing to it to be like "SEE, both sides ARE the same!" or "why even vote?!?!" is absurd.
Allowing the fascists to take power isn't the way. And while I don't think "JUST KEEP VOTING" will save us voting is literally a few hours per YEAR. I find it a bit, um, hard to square the circle of someone saying they're super worried about the rise of fascism and wanting to stop it and then not being willing to spend a few hours per year voting against it. It's almost as nonsensical as people telling themselves they would've signed up for WW2 to defend America but they're not willing to wear a mask. I get the vibe that some self-proclaimed progressive folks are secretly rooting for the fascists to win, which is........nuts.
JUST VOTE doesn't work, but voting is an incredibly easy way to help people and there isn't really a compelling reason NOT to do it as part of the many things we should be doing to resist facism and help people.
I know you're kidding but I genuinely feel that way about white people in Maine re-electing Susan fucking Collins.
We need a unified working class party.
Its always been class warfare, but the rich have two parties to work with to delimit the bounds of progress for everyone else.
I just... Cannot agree with this, as someone moderately involved in politics.
I am reminded daily, shit hourly, via Twitter, phone and email what the Biden administration is doing. I can't in good conscience deny this. The "where is Biden!?" takes have always been terrible. Period. I won't budge here.
The problem isn't "what is Biden doing?" The problem is "is what Biden's doing contributing to a storyline?"
And words cannot express the sadness I feel that our politics have finally arrived at this place.
He's not asleep at all. He's part of the reason the student loan system is as fucked up as it is. During his time as a senator he helped create it. Think about which state he hails from and who majorly contributed to his campaigns during those years?
Voting rights have been important, but unfortunately 1) SCOTUS is still SCOTUS so who knows if anything will stick even if it passes, and much more harrowing 2) how in the FUCK do they think anyone is going to want to vote for them after this shit?
How does the voting rights bill get passed w/out getting rid of the filibuster? This whole situation is so fucked, Democrats are walking into 2022 with a new COVID variant that is fucking everything up again, even for the fully vaccinated, restarted student loan payments, no more child tax credit and the only pieces of legislation they can point to that they accomplished in 2 years are a stimulus that included a $1400 check and an infrastructure bill that voters won't even feel for years as many of the projects are not shovel ready.
The only card left to play is "Republicans are nazi's who want to destroy democracy" and unfortunately the average voter isn't going to be moved much by that.
Their Hail Mary is that SCOTUS overturns Roe v. Wade and 2022 becomes an abortion fight which will ultimately help the Dems but that's a really bleak thing to be 'optimistic' about.
Quotes from this thread:
"The worst is when Democratic shills threaten us with Republican fascism when people criticize them. "Do you want Trump to put you in camps??? You better still support the Democrats". Fuck off. "
"It was already on life support but 2021 completely killed any faith I had left in electoralism. "
"So your answer to a poor performance is that we need to reward the Democrats with more power? "
"They think voting is the only thing they can do to affect outcomes, when news over the past year proves voting doesnt really do shit, except change what ass is in what chair."
"And yet, you and others have no answer for it aside from "vote," which is the same as "do nothing" because of the inevitability of shit going down anyway. "
"Its either life in prison or the firing squad, pick your choice." Sensible people: uhhh how about neither Deluded people: EXCUSE ME, but you only have two choices. Have you considered that death is worse than life in prison?"
""imagine how much worse it can get" might as well be "the people who we're leaving behind right now need to wait their turn""
There are probably more examples but I'm on mobile so searching through the thread & copying/pasting is wonky. (there are also tons of ppl in the thread lamenting how common accelerationism has become on ERA, which tracks with what I'm saying).
I guess I'm a "Democratic shill" because I think it's crazy to not spend a few hours per year voting against fascists. We can't just VOTE HARDER!! our way out of this disaster but of COURSE I'm going to spend 45 minutes each November voting against my local fascists.
I mean honestly local elections are the one domain where electoralism actually CAN make a huge difference by itself. That doesn't mean we shouldn't spend the other 364 days of the year advancing the cause in other ways...of course we should.
edit: and trust me, I heap MUCH more scorn onto pearl-clutching ""moderates"" who let fascists win because of sOcIaLiZm, but there aren't many of those on ERA. Like, white suburban folks who vote for people like Susan Collins and Glenn Youngkin because they're ""bipartisan"" or whatever are near the top of my list of people who are abetting the rise of facism in this country. Anything to keep those scary socialist PoCs out of power!
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BBB is a reconciliation bill, so it would need 50 votes.
A voting rights bill is not a reconciliation bill, so it would need 60 votes.
America needs a reboot. New constitution. Kick everyone out currently in government. Not even sure how America functions at this point. Like, what is holding everything together?
I think it's a deficiency of narrative.
With politics it's a question of "what have you done for me lately" more than much else. If people are not people who have been hurt lately in a way that Dems have helped, it's a problem. If people are amongst a group who has *rarely* been helped by Dems *directly* across their life experience, they're not coming up with a narrative reason to stay in the game.
I think that's why we're stuck in these strange repeating loops. When we win or lose it's in the moment. When the right wing wins it's a crusade they achieved a victory in on a long timeline of victory. When the right wing loses it's a crusade and they're losing and they've always been losing.
They sustain better than us. When one of theirs owns the libs they are feasting even if everything else in their life is a loss. The story keeps them alive.
Democrat stories too often are just data, or carefully manicured PR releases. We've surrendered myth-making on the level that the R's have it.
But maybe that's just the way it seems.
With politics it's a question of "what have you done for me lately" more than much else. If people are not people who have been hurt lately in a way that Dems have helped, it's a problem. If people are amongst a group who has *rarely* been helped by Dems *directly* across their life experience, they're not coming up with a narrative reason to stay in the game.
I think that's why we're stuck in these strange repeating loops. When we win or lose it's in the moment. When the right wing wins it's a crusade they achieved a victory in on a long timeline of victory. When the right wing loses it's a crusade and they're losing and they've always been losing.
They sustain better than us. When one of theirs owns the libs they are feasting even if everything else in their life is a loss. The story keeps them alive.
Democrat stories too often are just data, or carefully manicured PR releases. We've surrendered myth-making on the level that the R's have it.
But maybe that's just the way it seems.
The fact that we're forced into labor because the alternative is homelessness, hunger, and death. Gotta keep the machine churning out capital.
If you stop thinking of America as an exceptional beacon of freedom and democracy then it becomes very easy to see how it continues to function. America is just like another right-wing plutocracy. Only things separating it from other countries is its wealth, influence, and military might. The fantasy of American style democracy and superior moral values not only isn't its beating heart that keeps it alive, it simply doesn't exist.
Americans are morally and socially just like, say,,,, Chileans or Laotians or French or Sudanese or whoever. And Our country is and always has been governed by more or less corrupt officials just like countless other countries. The US will continue on this path. No revolution and no civil war. not in this century at least.
At a certain point it starts feeling more and more like hopelessly splashing your arms as water fills in the room and past your head. The irony of it all being I live in a blue district in a blue state. I should probably get more involved in my local socialist organizations, but spending most of the year physically ill during a pandemic made that difficult. It's obvious at this point that federal government in America is irrevocably down sliding, and the looming threat of climate change only furthers that.
People here will crow at accelerationism but there's actually no reason to be optimistic about this country when looking at what's going on. And the democrats are a big part of why. They won't be affected by what's coming.
People here will crow at accelerationism but there's actually no reason to be optimistic about this country when looking at what's going on. And the democrats are a big part of why. They won't be affected by what's coming.
I'm really glad you're feeling better physically.
I've got nothing on the fate of the country. I'm also in a blue district in a purple (?) state (Virginia, now). I'm looking into pro bono volunteer work. But given the structural realities of this country and human nature being what it is, I'm not optimistic either. I would LOVE to be proved wrong, but I don't see it happening in my lifetime. I don't advocate for accelerationism, but for those in truly precarious situations (which is few of us posting on a video game message board), I understand it now. I'm also acutely aware that incremental improvements on the margins don't mean a damned thing in the long-term; they're a short-term fix, at best.
Literally the only reason to vote Democrats at this point is at least they aren't fascists. They won't do anything, but they won't actively turn this country to totalitarian fascism either. The problem is your can't beat fascism by just doing nothing and hoping you keep getting more votes. As we can see with what red states are doing right now, voting won't matter by 2024, it will be total GOP control until we collapse into civil war. And the fucking idiots in the Democratic party are too stupid, too naive or too corrupt to at least pass a voting rights bills to stop the GOP take over. BBB will never pass and neither will a voting rights bill. This country will be in civil war by the end of the decade.
That's the beauty of the most militarized police force in the world.
Democrats definitely deserve some protests in the streets especially while they're in control. America has been shit still even after Trump being out of the office, the difference is that not much attention on it as before
Like 80% of the pro-Biden pitch in the primaries is his long history in the Senate and his supposed ability to deliver bipartisan votes to bills.
He has done fuck all.
To hear centrists talk of it, Biden was LBJ come again. Yet here we are...
They gutted the fuck out of the BBB bill, and they still can't get all 50 votes of their useless party.
But we're supposed to expect they'll get SIXTY senators to support a voting rights bill? lmao
Maybe they'll get Republican support if they adapt the three-fifths compromise into it.
Democrats- please go out and vote and we will make change happen!
Voters- the impossible was done, people got Arizona and Georgia to switch Blue. House and Senate are controlled by democrats.
Liberals- cool but that's not enough, how do you expect them to do anything, what did you expect, go back and vote again and then maybe they can finally do something, Vote Blue No Matter Who!
Narrator- Change never happened
I guess the problem with this is that it means they will get even less done the next two years and 24 will be even worse... 🥳/s
One of the biggest problems with the US is that it's too big for the structure and government it has. People still vastly outnumber the militarized police. Americans have engaged in mass protest even recently. But it's nearly impossible to keep momentum going. Vast tracks of empty land separate the population.
Your problem is the with the functions of the Senate, not with the Democratic party.
Everyone in this thread is whining about the same old "both sides" bullshit when the real problem is the SENATE.
THE INSTITUTION OF THE US SENATE IS THE PROBLEM.
The upper chamber of Congress needs to be completely reworked if we want to avoid situations like this. Blaming Dems for these failures accomplishes nothing. People who do this were always ready to give up and were just waiting for a chance to stop caring.
A party trying to make a broken system work for them will always fail; the party who doesn't need the system to work will always win in the end.
Biden ended the war in Afghanistan, greatly increased immigrant and refugee numbers and passed the biggest infrastructure bill in US history. But that's all just "nothing", I guess. And voting won't matter in 3 years? What are you even talking about? Not even the worst-case scenarios of voting rights put the conditions at "voting won't matter".
Takes like this are fucking braindead, yet you have the audacity to call other people stupid. What a fucking joke.
I wouldn't really tout Biden's immigration record considering he has been pretty terrible on it in general.
No, the problem is the Democratic party for consistently failing at taking advantage of the functions of these terrible institutions.
Most "rules" are just gentlemen's agreements, yet the Dems will not break them.
You can't get two senators to support nuking the filibuster or passing any worthwhile legislation, so how the hell will they "rework" the Senate?
I'm not saying it's great, but it's not "nothing". Especially those refugee numbers. Those numbers translate to real, substantive, positive change in thousands of lives. It's maddening when people brush that off as "nothing".
I'm saying the narrative needs to move away from "Dems are incompetent" to "the systems Dems work within renders them incompetent". Talking about the filibuster is a nice start, but the problems are muuuuuuuch deeper than one archaic rule. When I say rework, I mostly mean "nuke it and start over", but that language tends to annoy people who think solutions like that are untenable. It's not something that can be achieved in the short-term, but bringing up the failures of the institution of the Senate could eventually change public sentiment, which is the first step to changing something so old and entrenched.