Wake-up Call: Democrats could easily lose the White House and Senate next year

return2ozma@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 589 points –
Democrats could easily lose the White House and Senate next year
businessinsider.com
422

You are viewing a single comment

Within the Democratic party, there's debate about how to handle climate change. There are people who advocate for slow, cautious changes and still see fossil fuels having a small role to play in the future. There are others within the Democratic party that want more drastic action, and make a huge government spending program to try to rapidly move the US energy to renewables (even naming it after one of the biggest US government programs made during the depression). That's normal politics. And it's all within the Democratic party.

The GOP mostly deny climate change exists. A few GOP members suggest that climate change is happening, but is a natural event not caused by man.

The recent house drama from the speakership battle was caused because 10 nutjobs didn't want to fund any social programs and wouldn't approve the budget. Most GOP compromised and made a TEMPORARY budget proposal that the Democratic reps would vote for. This caused the hardliners to remove the speaker. Because he had the audacity to compromise on a TEMPORARY budget.

Removing policy aside and just looking at behavior, many GOP members do not believe in compromising to get things done. There's attempts to not hold elected officials accountable (unless they are from the other party). It's very little cooperation and more retaliation.

A single GOP senator didn't like that the US military would reimburse a servicemember's travel for medical care if they lived in a state where some reproductive treatments weren't available. This one senator has single-handedly denied 360 military promotions and nominations to military positions. The Senate has historically tried to make it where being the minority party still had some power, so the rules let this happen (the other GOP senators on this committee weren't blocking, just the one guy).

The Democratic senators became so fed up they decided to change the rules to prevent a single committee member from blocking promotions. While most GOP senators publicly condemn this guy, many said this rule change was too much. So it looks like the rule change vote will be along party lines, although the #1 GOP senator has said it might be necessary to vote through to get the military back on track.

The last GOP senator really known for being reasonable and wanting to work collaboratively (McCain) died. He was respected by both parties until Trump came along, and now the GOP don't really hold his legacy in high regard.

Sorry, a lot longer than I intended, but it's a pattern showing no desire to try to govern effectively. Putting all issues of policy aside, I think it's a bad idea to vote for the GOP.

The only issue with that summary is that the people who voted to remove the representative willing to compromise were the GOP nutjobs AND the entirety of the 208 DNC representatives that were present. While I'm sure they had some political reason (aside from the popcorn moments), they showed that they, too, weren't going to help someone willing to compromise.

In what world did Democrats owe McCarthy anything? He backtracked on the debt limit deal he personally negotiated in the summer to try and appease the nutjobs, and on his commitment to require a vote by the full House of Representatives before launching an impeachment inquiry into Biden, proving himself unreliable, untrustworthy, and a slave to the whims of the extremist fringe in his caucus. He publicly stated that he did not want house Democrats to help him keep the speakership, never reached out to them once in the leadup to his ouster, and offered zero concessions to entice Democrats to vote for him. So why in the world is it Democrats' fault that they didn't vote for a backstabbing, untrustworthy, extremist lunatic that spit on them publicly and gave them nothing to entice their vote?

I'm sick and tired of the rhetoric that since Democrats are the responsible adults in the room, they have to bear responsibility for not bailing the GOP out of their own messes. How about we hold McCarthy responsible for not keeping his caucus under control, or the right wing nutjobs for voting like they have full control of the government instead of being the fringe of the fringe in a party that controls a single chamber in Congress?