I remember watching V for Vendetta when Obama was president and I actually can't believe the US went from the Obama era to being on the brink of becoming a christofascist nation.
For as long as Democrats continue to run lukewarm candidates and Republicans populists with actual support, this will continue to be the case.
Do you blame the scorpion or the toad for trusting it? It is entirely the Democrats fault that things are as bad as they are.
Do you blame the scorpion or the toad for trusting it?
Victim blaming is bad, blame the scorpion.
Do you blame the scorpion or the toad for trusting it?
... the fucking scorpion. How is that a question?
Don't forget the republicans gerry mandering districts to keep local and federal control.
I'd also argue about the republicans having actual support. It's been decades since a republican won the popular vote. They win because of the aforementioned gerry mandering to give them enough of the electoral votes to win. Plus the shit they are pulling locally with their majority where they are passing laws that let them ignore the will of the people even if 90% of people are for something.
Yes, the dems need to get their shit together but we as a country need to be do and be better. We need to do more of the district lines being drawn by an outside group instead of local interests. We need to get rid of the electoral college and much much more.
Until young voters vote in primaries at rates approaching the elderly rates, the Deomcratic party will not be able to run progressive candidates.
Every progressive Democrat candidate who banked on youth turnout has turned out to have misplaced their faith in our ability to translate internet snark to action.
Until young voters vote in primaries at rates approaching the elderly rates, the Deomcratic party will not be able to run progressive candidates.
So never. Fantastic.
Until young voters vote in primaries at rates approaching the elderly rates, the Deomcratic party will not be able to run progressive candidates.
When all the boomers have died, Democrats will have to come up with a new excuse for opposing progressives.
What was progressive now will be seen as obvious. Just the same way as things that are happening now would have been considered progressive for the previous generation.
Democrats don't run progressives because progressives are bad for fundraising. The powers that be (the wealth elite) like to be able to rob our coffers at their leisure, so they won't give money to candidates that might turn off (or even slow down) the tap of our resources.
Bernie would have won if the youth had come out to vote at a rate comparable to the elderly.
It's easier to blame the elite than to act but it's not a huge conspiracy it's simply down to who shows up to the goddamn primaries.
Any attempt by the Democrats to do anything tends to be blocked by the Republicans. Anything more serious starts threatening their party support.
The problem is the following loop:
With lies, grifting, and general ignorance easier to spread than the complexity of truth, Republicans always hold an inherent advantage by appealing to the lowest common denominator.
Democrats make a mistake of trying to appeal to these special "centrists" and conservatives as if resurrecting Reagan himself under the D label would ever pull them over.
Because of watering down their policy (and thus effficacy) they ostracize their own grassroots base that does the groundwork in phonebanking, protesting, canvassing, and perhaps most importantly -- pushing back against nutjobs on social media and pushing back against their parents, aunts, uncles at Thanksgiving dinner.
And Democrats wonder why Democrat voter enthusiasm is always so low.
If Democrats for once campaigned on a platform they believed in; if they actually wholeheartedly backed a candidate who had a science-based, equality-based platform from a position of sincerity -- that would be contagious.
Republicans win by fear and hatred; Democrats can't win by that. It needs to be surrounded by love, vision, and solidarity.
The problem is that we have a country that can support three to five political parties and a voting system that can only support two. So a plurality of people will almost always be unhappy.
Any attempt by the Democrats to do anything tends to be blocked by the Republicans.
If it makes it that far. BBB never came up for a vote. The public option was killed without a single Republican vote.
The Democrats spent years giving prolonged benefit of the doubt to the Republicans who used that space to instal their own government via judges. They saw it happening but I'd bet you a million bucks their donors told them not to worry, because guess what, fascism is GREAT for buisness if you're the one who already has the business.
ROFL! Good one! You had me there.
I'm sure they've focus tested this and yes it is the most important issue, I think they have too much faith in the American voter.
I can easily see Independents or frustrated Democrats thinking "we were warned ad nauseum about a fascist takeover by trump last time and it didn't happen and inflation is killing me..."
I think trump's threats to democracy is the most serious issue but I can't see this winning many new voters. Maybe the hope is to increase turnout on our side...
They don't have anything else, because the other platforms are related (don't genocide minorities) or anti-disaster-capitalist.
Actual liberal policies could fix some of the problems neoliberalism has created by going back to certain New Deal era policies and regulations but that simply will not happen in post Citizens United world.
I watched the ad and I saw Trump's name a lot more than Biden's. Other than that it feels like a bunch of stock footage trying to make me feel like being an American isn't shameful.
Not a good ad. But what I expected.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Joe Biden’s first campaign ad of the year focuses on threats to US democracy, timed for release on the anniversary of the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol.
As footage of political violence and rioting shows on screen, the president notes that “there’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy”.
Donald Trump is the overwhelming favorite to win the Republican nomination for November’s presidential election, despite his multitude of legal woes, which include charges linked to the Jan 6 attack.
The former president has also struck a notably more extremist tone during his campaign, raising fears he aims to deliberately erode US democratic institutions.
The Biden attack ad will run nationally and in local markets in swing states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as online.
The spot highlights how Trump and his followers are continually working to undermine elections, the Biden-Harris campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said in a news release.“Over the last three years, Maga Republicans haven’t shied away from the Big Lie – they’ve doubled down.
The original article contains 338 words, the summary contains 183 words. Saved 46%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Everything Trump says and does is a campaign ad for Biden.
Not for his brain-dead loyalists.
If you want to actually do something, help out with volunteer time and, if you can afford it, money.
Get involved with a close house or senate race too.
This a lob ball for republicans who just have to point out democrats are the ones taking opposition off the ballots.
It's so fucking stupid that Jan 6 was a cut-and-dried insurrection, that the 14th amendment should obviously bar Trump from office, and yet it might be better, politically speaking, to let him run anyway. All because there's a giant segment of the population that receives all their news information from sources that scrub it for anything politically detrimental to their party/ point of view.
I fucking hate it here. Fuck Nixon and Reagan, giant pieces of shit, for bringing this horrible reality to us.
Problem is its not cut and dried without a conviction. And im blaming Bidens DoJ for that taking this long, they didnt even begin charging him until last august, its 2024 and the trial hasnt even started.
And im blaming Bidens DoJ for that taking this long, they didnt even begin charging him until last august, its 2024 and the trial hasnt even started.
Tell me you have no idea how the criminal justice system works without telling me you have no idea how the criminal justice system works.
The DoJ has the authority to charge, arrest, and prosecute for federal crimes.
Not without due process, they don't.
The due process part comes after the prosecution part.
"the institution and conducting of legal proceedings against someone in respect of a criminal charge"
I dont think you know what prosecute means
How do you mean? The people challenging Trump being on the ballots are Republicans with standing in those jurisdictions.
I am not offering my opinion on these cases, but I think it's important to make sure we understand who the plaintiffs are.
the two states that have removed Trump from their ballots are Colorado and Maine, Colorado's entirely democrat appointed supreme court, and Maine's democratic secretary of state.
You are saying their rulings go against written law in preference to their party affiliation? If so, I'd be interested in understanding how.
I am saying they are democrats that have removed republican opposition from the next election. This is what republican voters are going to see and its gonna be hard to campaign on democracy itself while setting this precedent.
Do our laws matter or not? The guy has been found by courts to have participated in an insurrection. He lost last time, we all know that. He tried to make it so he stayed in power, we all know that. We are just supposed to pretend that didn't happen because some people still like him?
Sorry, not how our county works.
The way it's supposed to go is he gets arrested immediately after the crime by the DoJ and brought to federal trial. But that didnt happen, for several years.
This is like someone being charged with illegally possessing a firearm as a felon, but without ever being convicted as a felon. No matter how much you believe they committed a felony, they still have to be found guilty first. In this case it's someone being barred from running for office as an insurrectionist, without ever being convicted as one.
The way it’s supposed to go is he gets arrested immediately after the crime by the DoJ and brought to federal trial
No. The way it's supposed to go is the DoJ gathers evidence and decides whether there's enough of it to charge someone with a crime, and then that person is presumed innocent and has a right to an attorney who builds a case for their defense, using a process called "discovery" which grants them access to evidence and witnesses, and then they are entitled to a jury of their peers, which takes time to select from the general population. Where the fuck did you learn how prosecution works? Pyongyang?
I think you again stopped reading mid sentence. You are describing the federal trial. And you are confusing arresting with sentencing. For many crimes, especially violent ones (which, considering 5 deaths and over a hundred injured, I'd say this qualifies), arresting is actually the first step, to make sure no one else is endangered while the legal process goes on. Again, the DoJ has the authority to arrest, charge, and prosecute for federal crimes. And prosecute does not mean sentencing, it does not mean the DoJ gets to find anyone guilty themselves, they bring them to trial and make the case, they try to prove that the person committed the crime, and it's up to judge or jury to decide to find them guilty or innocent. That is what prosecution means.
For many crimes, especially violent ones (which, considering 5 deaths and over a hundred injured, I’d say this qualifies)
Yes, and the people directly responsible for that violence were arrested as quickly as they could be identified and located. It's like you simply refuse to accept that assigning culpability is not so straightforward when it's several degrees removed. Mens rea in a criminal conspiracy requires an overt act to commit a crime, and the overt act must be verified, else a charge wouldn't be provable in court. And no DA in the country would arrest someone that high profile in such a complicated case without gathering evidence, interviewing witnesses, crossing t's, and dotting i's:
I don't know what world you live in where the DOJ can simply act like John Fucking Wayne whenever it wants, but these are career prosecutors, and thankfully they're not dumb enough to try to lock up the kingpin before closing the net around the underlings and making sure the case is ironclad.
Yeah theyre handling this case so meticulously that the defendent will be in position to fire the prosecutor because they took so long. Its already creating a trainwreck with state level democrats trying to remove his election eligibility before theres any convictions. I bet you those cases are gonna make their way to the supreme court a hell of a lot faster than any charge against Trump ever has.
Full fucking stop. The moment they start speeding shit up because it might be affected by or affect an election, is the minute we become a banana republic. The DoJ is NOT, nor should it ever be, a political weapon.
I remember watching V for Vendetta when Obama was president and I actually can't believe the US went from the Obama era to being on the brink of becoming a christofascist nation.
For as long as Democrats continue to run lukewarm candidates and Republicans populists with actual support, this will continue to be the case.
Do you blame the scorpion or the toad for trusting it? It is entirely the Democrats fault that things are as bad as they are.
Victim blaming is bad, blame the scorpion.
... the fucking scorpion. How is that a question?
Don't forget the republicans gerry mandering districts to keep local and federal control.
I'd also argue about the republicans having actual support. It's been decades since a republican won the popular vote. They win because of the aforementioned gerry mandering to give them enough of the electoral votes to win. Plus the shit they are pulling locally with their majority where they are passing laws that let them ignore the will of the people even if 90% of people are for something.
Yes, the dems need to get their shit together but we as a country need to be do and be better. We need to do more of the district lines being drawn by an outside group instead of local interests. We need to get rid of the electoral college and much much more.
Until young voters vote in primaries at rates approaching the elderly rates, the Deomcratic party will not be able to run progressive candidates.
Every progressive Democrat candidate who banked on youth turnout has turned out to have misplaced their faith in our ability to translate internet snark to action.
So never. Fantastic.
When all the boomers have died, Democrats will have to come up with a new excuse for opposing progressives.
What was progressive now will be seen as obvious. Just the same way as things that are happening now would have been considered progressive for the previous generation.
Democrats don't run progressives because progressives are bad for fundraising. The powers that be (the wealth elite) like to be able to rob our coffers at their leisure, so they won't give money to candidates that might turn off (or even slow down) the tap of our resources.
Bernie would have won if the youth had come out to vote at a rate comparable to the elderly.
It's easier to blame the elite than to act but it's not a huge conspiracy it's simply down to who shows up to the goddamn primaries.
Any attempt by the Democrats to do anything tends to be blocked by the Republicans. Anything more serious starts threatening their party support.
The problem is the following loop:
With lies, grifting, and general ignorance easier to spread than the complexity of truth, Republicans always hold an inherent advantage by appealing to the lowest common denominator.
Democrats make a mistake of trying to appeal to these special "centrists" and conservatives as if resurrecting Reagan himself under the D label would ever pull them over.
Because of watering down their policy (and thus effficacy) they ostracize their own grassroots base that does the groundwork in phonebanking, protesting, canvassing, and perhaps most importantly -- pushing back against nutjobs on social media and pushing back against their parents, aunts, uncles at Thanksgiving dinner.
And Democrats wonder why Democrat voter enthusiasm is always so low.
If Democrats for once campaigned on a platform they believed in; if they actually wholeheartedly backed a candidate who had a science-based, equality-based platform from a position of sincerity -- that would be contagious.
Republicans win by fear and hatred; Democrats can't win by that. It needs to be surrounded by love, vision, and solidarity.
The problem is that we have a country that can support three to five political parties and a voting system that can only support two. So a plurality of people will almost always be unhappy.
If it makes it that far. BBB never came up for a vote. The public option was killed without a single Republican vote.
The Democrats spent years giving prolonged benefit of the doubt to the Republicans who used that space to instal their own government via judges. They saw it happening but I'd bet you a million bucks their donors told them not to worry, because guess what, fascism is GREAT for buisness if you're the one who already has the business.
ROFL! Good one! You had me there.
I'm sure they've focus tested this and yes it is the most important issue, I think they have too much faith in the American voter.
I can easily see Independents or frustrated Democrats thinking "we were warned ad nauseum about a fascist takeover by trump last time and it didn't happen and inflation is killing me..."
I think trump's threats to democracy is the most serious issue but I can't see this winning many new voters. Maybe the hope is to increase turnout on our side...
They don't have anything else, because the other platforms are related (don't genocide minorities) or anti-disaster-capitalist.
Actual liberal policies could fix some of the problems neoliberalism has created by going back to certain New Deal era policies and regulations but that simply will not happen in post Citizens United world.
I watched the ad and I saw Trump's name a lot more than Biden's. Other than that it feels like a bunch of stock footage trying to make me feel like being an American isn't shameful.
Not a good ad. But what I expected.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Joe Biden’s first campaign ad of the year focuses on threats to US democracy, timed for release on the anniversary of the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol.
As footage of political violence and rioting shows on screen, the president notes that “there’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy”.
Donald Trump is the overwhelming favorite to win the Republican nomination for November’s presidential election, despite his multitude of legal woes, which include charges linked to the Jan 6 attack.
The former president has also struck a notably more extremist tone during his campaign, raising fears he aims to deliberately erode US democratic institutions.
The Biden attack ad will run nationally and in local markets in swing states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as online.
The spot highlights how Trump and his followers are continually working to undermine elections, the Biden-Harris campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said in a news release.“Over the last three years, Maga Republicans haven’t shied away from the Big Lie – they’ve doubled down.
The original article contains 338 words, the summary contains 183 words. Saved 46%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Everything Trump says and does is a campaign ad for Biden.
Not for his brain-dead loyalists.
If you want to actually do something, help out with volunteer time and, if you can afford it, money.
Get involved with a close house or senate race too.
This a lob ball for republicans who just have to point out democrats are the ones taking opposition off the ballots.
It's so fucking stupid that Jan 6 was a cut-and-dried insurrection, that the 14th amendment should obviously bar Trump from office, and yet it might be better, politically speaking, to let him run anyway. All because there's a giant segment of the population that receives all their news information from sources that scrub it for anything politically detrimental to their party/ point of view.
I fucking hate it here. Fuck Nixon and Reagan, giant pieces of shit, for bringing this horrible reality to us.
Problem is its not cut and dried without a conviction. And im blaming Bidens DoJ for that taking this long, they didnt even begin charging him until last august, its 2024 and the trial hasnt even started.
Tell me you have no idea how the criminal justice system works without telling me you have no idea how the criminal justice system works.
The DoJ has the authority to charge, arrest, and prosecute for federal crimes.
Not without due process, they don't.
The due process part comes after the prosecution part.
"the institution and conducting of legal proceedings against someone in respect of a criminal charge"
I dont think you know what prosecute means
How do you mean? The people challenging Trump being on the ballots are Republicans with standing in those jurisdictions.
I am not offering my opinion on these cases, but I think it's important to make sure we understand who the plaintiffs are.
the two states that have removed Trump from their ballots are Colorado and Maine, Colorado's entirely democrat appointed supreme court, and Maine's democratic secretary of state.
You are saying their rulings go against written law in preference to their party affiliation? If so, I'd be interested in understanding how.
I am saying they are democrats that have removed republican opposition from the next election. This is what republican voters are going to see and its gonna be hard to campaign on democracy itself while setting this precedent.
Do our laws matter or not? The guy has been found by courts to have participated in an insurrection. He lost last time, we all know that. He tried to make it so he stayed in power, we all know that. We are just supposed to pretend that didn't happen because some people still like him?
Sorry, not how our county works.
The way it's supposed to go is he gets arrested immediately after the crime by the DoJ and brought to federal trial. But that didnt happen, for several years.
This is like someone being charged with illegally possessing a firearm as a felon, but without ever being convicted as a felon. No matter how much you believe they committed a felony, they still have to be found guilty first. In this case it's someone being barred from running for office as an insurrectionist, without ever being convicted as one.
No. The way it's supposed to go is the DoJ gathers evidence and decides whether there's enough of it to charge someone with a crime, and then that person is presumed innocent and has a right to an attorney who builds a case for their defense, using a process called "discovery" which grants them access to evidence and witnesses, and then they are entitled to a jury of their peers, which takes time to select from the general population. Where the fuck did you learn how prosecution works? Pyongyang?
I think you again stopped reading mid sentence. You are describing the federal trial. And you are confusing arresting with sentencing. For many crimes, especially violent ones (which, considering 5 deaths and over a hundred injured, I'd say this qualifies), arresting is actually the first step, to make sure no one else is endangered while the legal process goes on. Again, the DoJ has the authority to arrest, charge, and prosecute for federal crimes. And prosecute does not mean sentencing, it does not mean the DoJ gets to find anyone guilty themselves, they bring them to trial and make the case, they try to prove that the person committed the crime, and it's up to judge or jury to decide to find them guilty or innocent. That is what prosecution means.
Yes, and the people directly responsible for that violence were arrested as quickly as they could be identified and located. It's like you simply refuse to accept that assigning culpability is not so straightforward when it's several degrees removed. Mens rea in a criminal conspiracy requires an overt act to commit a crime, and the overt act must be verified, else a charge wouldn't be provable in court. And no DA in the country would arrest someone that high profile in such a complicated case without gathering evidence, interviewing witnesses, crossing t's, and dotting i's:
I don't know what world you live in where the DOJ can simply act like John Fucking Wayne whenever it wants, but these are career prosecutors, and thankfully they're not dumb enough to try to lock up the kingpin before closing the net around the underlings and making sure the case is ironclad.
Yeah theyre handling this case so meticulously that the defendent will be in position to fire the prosecutor because they took so long. Its already creating a trainwreck with state level democrats trying to remove his election eligibility before theres any convictions. I bet you those cases are gonna make their way to the supreme court a hell of a lot faster than any charge against Trump ever has.
The. DoJ. Should. Not. Consider. Political. Implications. When. Pursuing. A. Criminal. Trial.
Full fucking stop. The moment they start speeding shit up because it might be affected by or affect an election, is the minute we become a banana republic. The DoJ is NOT, nor should it ever be, a political weapon.