Democrats say Trump is an existential threat. They’re not acting like it.
Democrats say Trump is an existential threat. They’re not acting like it.
If the stakes of the 2024 election are as great as the party says, there’s no excuse for inaction.
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Given the number of existential threats we have and are facing, the reaction tracks.
What do you personally do the the face of existential threats? Get ice cream and watch a movie.
There’s nothing that can be done about SCOTUS at the moment. Republicans have House majority, so impeachment and resizing votes will fail.
Something could be done if everyone voted blue in the fall and we had Democratic majority in Congress.
the democrats had majority control and they still fucked it up by pretending they couldn't change the filibuster rules and they'll find some other way to fuck it up again if we do vote for them.
The odds of anything turning blue in November other than maybe the Whitehouse seems slim. I have no numbers or proof and I am completely stating my opinion, but it seems the dems have targeted defective Republicans and centrists and not people on the left. I'd imagine Republicans that can't stomach Trump are still going to vote red everywhere but the Whitehouse. While the voters further to the left than both our conservative parties will just stay home.
Democrats only need 4 more seats to retake the House. If they win the presidency, there will likely be more than that riding on the coattails.
Agreed. The entire House is up for election in November, along with 33 Senate seats.
My biggest concern is the down ballot effects of sizable Democratic abstentions. If Trump wins, he’ll likely have a Republican Congress supporting him.
While the voters further to the left than both our conservative parties will just stay home
If they stay home they are insuring an extremely authoritarian dictatorship - an extremely stupid move.
The mental gymnastics it takes to say they are "insuring it", instead of blaming the DNC and the centrists that shoehorned in an obviously senile old man and refused to primary him when he was 4 years older. Actions have consequences.
Exactly. The consequence of not voting for that senile old man is accepting an authoritarian criminal into the White House.
And the consequences of forcing forward an inept candidate for your own personal gain causes the entire country to have an authoritarian criminal in the Whitehouse. Luckily you have a bunch of mindless knuckleheads on the internet who blame the people that do not accept the dystopia you put forth instead of blaming the selfish corpo twats that would rather have a Trump presidency than run anyone even slightly left of center. The bar was so low all they had to do is have someone that could speak a complete sentence and they couldn't even do that. They had to get as close to that bar as possible. Fuck the DNC and every sycophant that voted for him in the primaries. This is their fault that we are in this situation, not mine.
I will vote against Trump in November, but fuck this system. I am ready to watch it burn, which is where most of Trumps votes come from, people who are ready to watch it burn.
Unfortunately that burning is going to cause the loss of unfathomable amounts of lives, mostly historically marginalized communities, including women. Probably especially women.
Biden could nominate three new justices to the court today if he wanted to.
He cannot. There are no vacancies.
The Constitution does not stipulate the number of Supreme Court Justices; the number is set instead by Congress. There have been as few as six, but since 1869 there have been nine Justices, including one Chief Justice.
I've noticed this a lot on lemmy. People state things as an objective fact that are just completely wrong. They start with a false assumption and built their ideas on that. People seem to have virtually no understanding of how the civic process works.
I agree. It’s maddening. The way I challenge it is by citing sources to debunk the misinformation. Most people just block them, leading to unchecked misinformation for more passive users to read as facts.
That is the way to do it. Plenty of people parrot what they read. I am guilty of it because I can't research EVERYTHING EVER, but I can hear reliable information and spit it back out. If you take the time to post up receipts, people will vomit up your facts and you make the discourse better.
Yeah, that is how people are ON THE INTERNET....it gives the confidently incorrect a megaphone.
Didn't Democrats control the House and Senate for the first few years of his presidency? Looks like they failed to use the time they had very effectively. Why reward lazy behavior with another term?
50 votes that includes Joe Manchin, Sinema, etc in the Senate is not control. The last time they had an actual fillibuster proof majority they passed the ACA, which would have included a public option if they had another vote. And that period where they had control lasted a few months, not years. The idea that Democrats don't pass legislation when they aren't being blocked by the domestic terror cell they have to work alongside is completely ahistorical.
50 votes that includes Joe Manchin, Sinema, etc in the Senate is not control.
With the majority they had, they had enough seats to do away with the filibuster forever.
The last time they had an actual fillibuster proof majority they passed the ACA, which would have included a public option if they had another vote.
Nonsense. They simply would have found a different senator to vote no. Ben Nelson was every bit as instrumental as Lieberman in killing the public option.
So the obvious solution is give control to the party that’s systematically dismantling the protections of our rights?
No. The solution is to dump Biden and try to get a candidate that can prevent that.
It's not true though they're incorrect about the timeline.
That said, Congress could have changed that during the first two years of Biden's presidency, but the Senate would need to change its rules to get rid of the filibuster to do so, and they didn't wanna.
There's plenty that can be done about the Court. Just tell them no. They made a massive precedent-defying power grab overruling Chevron. If the climate is an existential problem, a constitutional crisis is warranted.
Who do you believe could just tell them no and have them comply?
It would be Congress, but Republicans control the House at the moment.
They could be subpoenaed into a house select committee to undergo questioning explaining their actions . It would at least be a bold move and have them try and explain their reasoning to an equal institution under the republic?
There is no magic bullet, but you need to return some heat or else go under without a fight. It would also completely unhinge the conservative forces hell bent on a dictatorship.
You don't need them to comply. All they can do is write words. If you tell them they're making a power grab and you're not going to just cede power to them, they don't have anything they can do but write more words.
Defying the Supreme Court would set an extraordinarily terrible precedent. This only works if the masses are doing the defying. And it's incredibly risky, as the Republicans would very quickly follow suit
Oh no! A bad precedent. Wouldn't want to have one of those. Surely precedent will protect us from having reproductive rights stolen, or declaring the president a king, or declaring the regulatory state invalid. The fascists are already on the march and have demonstrated they're willing to trash precedent without the Democrats making the first move.
But none of that matters. Is this an existential issue or not? If it is, a constitutional crisis is warranted to solve it. You can't say something is existential and then worry about not doing anything too extreme.
Its long overdue for the Democrats to take some extreme measures. Without the opposing forces we'll certainly not be a republic by November. I'm ready to protest en masse. Shit I'll help plan.
Starting collective action has always been the big stumbling block for the left-of-center in America. Europeans would riot for far less. We need more unions and unions willing to be political to help act as a nucleus for mass protests to say they can't just do whatever they want. People should believe they have power other than just voting or signing a petition.
The Supreme Court made bribery semi-legal, elevated allied presidents to kings, and dismantled the regulations that do most of the heavy lifting to keep our air and water clean. While I concur with many Democrats correct statements about how bad these rulings are, they should be leading people to the streets. Hell, the three dissenting judges should be going before the senate to explain how antithetical to American democracy the most recent ruling is. Stop pretending the system is working when it's in freefall with no correction in sight.
Congress could impeach Justices or increase the headcount to properly balance the Court. Those are the legitimate ways to challenge these rulings based on the checks and balances in our governmental design.
That would require Democrats to vote with high turnout for Senate and House elections.
That would require Democrats to vote with high turnout for Senate and House elections.
Instead we'll give them a razor thin majority and complain when they don't pass sweeping legislation that requires the GOP to sign on to.
Right. Lieberman screwed single-payer healthcare, therefore all of the Democrats in Congress were useless.
What exactly is the risk when considering the very real danger the court is doing to the country? Tolerating intolerance will only take the country in one direction.
Making the Judicial branch unelected lifetime appointments has proven to be a massive failure.
But who, who is "you" in this scenario? Who do you think can just tell the court "no"? Let's be specific.
My point was what do YOU do? Not what should one do.
Most people get ice cream and ignore the situation.