Doonesbury is on point today.
You know, Democratic legislators’ spines are also showing signs of decay — they’re awfully wobbly. Maybe they need calcium supplements?
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Something about politics produces spine decay.
Just saw this in today’s paper, and wondered if you had. Very appropriate.
hey, FWIW, dems have been TRYING to impeach this fucker.
it gets stalled (3 times now that I recall), in the GoP controlled committee… because why have a fucking independent committee to rule on impeachment proceedings, after all.
https://www.google.co.nz/search?source=hp&ei=oStwW_vOAs7W-Qabp4fwCg&q=6+democrats+filed+impeachment&oq=democrats+file+for+&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.0i22i10i30k1.1005.4665.0.7138.20.17.0.0.0.0.392.2926.2-5j5.10.0….0…1c.1.64.psy-ab..10.10.2921.0..0j0i131k1j0i22i30k1.0.iDfSuZsecps
read any one of the links.
OTOH, the first time it came to the floor, in december, most dems voted it down themselves.
not sure what happened there…
maybe you’re right.
oops.
Don’t be silly. There’s plenty of spine being shown on both sides of the aisle. You are merely continuing to pretend that what politicians say they want is what they actually want.
The Republicans, like the Tories in the UK, want exactly two things: to make the rich even richer, and to remain in power. They don’t care if they destroy the country as long as they continue to rule the country.
The Democrats are slightly more complicated: they primarily want to stifle any serious dissent against the status quo which arises from the left, secondarily they want good PR, and after that they want the rich to get even richer. (You can see the first point illustrated with almost embarrassing blatancy from the way the same people who were talking — endlessly and regressively — about how Bernie Bros were motivated by sexism are now trying to get Ocasio-Cortez and her supporters to shut up. It is also amply demonstrated by the way the Obama administration went in for preemptive warfare, mass deportations, and prosecution of journalists under the Espionage Act of 1913, despite these being right-wing “values”.)
Both parties are very willing to stand up and fight — to make our lives worse, bloat the military even more, and push us ever-further into an authoritarian dystopia.
This is just silly. Democratic politicians (not those in the electorate, not “Democrats”) want political control. They attempt to gain such control and to keep their important jobs as elected officials. That is true. It is of course a problem when that is prioritized over policies/platforms/solutions/etc. that are good, coherent, practical, fair, and so forth. This is not news. No surprises here. Problems like this are older than dirt and aren’t specific to Democratic politicians.
The fact is that most Democrats (almost none of them politicians, along with a few who are) don’t want to stifle any serious dissent against the status quo which arises from “the left” (which consists almost entirely of themselves, it hardly needs to be said), the value of their PR is not even a thing, and they don’t want the rich to get even richer. None of that would accurately describe a tendency among “Democrats,” the vast majority of which are ordinary voters/citizens. When you confuse matters like this, as you’re apt to do, you are saying shit that is simply false and cannot be taken seriously.
@slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) #1
Something about politics produces spine decay.
I wonder if this isn’t inherent to representative democracies: the only ones that can actually get elected are those who promise everything to everyone, those who compromise by instinct rather than those with integrity and technical competence.
These people will always put themselves between the rock and the hard place pretty much by necessity; and at that point whatever they do someone will be able to see them as spineless.
To remain in power or get in power does seem to be the primary motivation of politicians. The politicians on the democratic side act like they believe the republican propaganda that to win they must play to the conservative agenda because a majority of the people think like that. They are always playing toward what they take from the republicans as the middle. I have heard as much right here more than once. In doing so they have discouraged many voters to the degree that they do not vote at all
I have doubts that the premise is true that the majority tend to lean conservative. In fact i suspect it is the opposite that the majority would respond very favorably to a much more progressive agenda if they were offered one by politicians who they believed had the courage of their convictions and would fight for them. The democrats have been running away from anything that even hints of being as moderate as the New Deal for years and years and have all but abandoned labor except for contributions and man power as well.
uncle frogy
@#6, consciousness razor
Nope. They don’t want political control. If they wanted political control, they would have taken political control when the electorate handed it to them in 2008. Instead, they spent a year desperately looking for anything to do which wasn’t acting on their campaign promises of 2006 or 2008 (ending the wars, punishing or breaking up the Too-Big-To-Fail banks, cutting the military budget, extending social programs, eliminating mortgage fraud, starting public works programs to reinvigorate the economy, raising taxes on the rich), and then united — to work exclusively (as in “refusing to even discuss anything else”) on the ACA, which was not one of the campaign promises they had made, and which was originally a Republican plan, and which notably did not solve the healthcare crisis. Just by coincidence, the watered-down version they passed took up all the remaining time before the next election. Imagine that, what a coincidence!
Then they lost their filibuster-proof majority and used the fact that they were merely a majority as an excuse to attempt nothing whatsoever of any consequence for two years, and then lost control of Congress completely. The few of them who attempted to do anything were effectively neutered by the party leadership standing with the Republicans — Elizabeth Warren’s consumer protection agency was stymied, for example, by the fact that Hillary Clinton’s best buddy Deborah Wasserman Schultz was constantly providing the necessary majority to keep it from having teeth. I forget whether it was Harry Reid or Chuck Schumer who commented on the party’s unwillingness to back an actual progressive candidate in a western state (in which the Republicans narrowly won) by saying that they would rather lose the seat than have a progressive take it, but it happened.
Not holding Congress is the modern Democratic Party’s dream — it means that they don’t need to worry that any token resistance they put up to keep their gullible voters happy might actually succeed and interfere with what their donors from the 1% (the only people they actually listen to) want. Some of them don’t even bother to pretend — that’s why Democrats (like Tim Kaine, who you wanted to have as VP a couple of years ago) keep voting for Republican measures and nominees. They don’t even have to campaign — in fact, the leadership is probably a bit worried that there may actually be a Blue Wave; that would require them to start finding excuses for why they can’t do anything to stop Trump or pass any of the leftist legislation which polls say is so popular with the public, like universal healthcare or a rise in the minimum wage. They had to do that for six years after the 2006 elections and it was hard work! But they’re not that worried; if people like you were okay with impeachment being announced as “off the table” in 2007, you’ll be okay with it in 2019 if that should be necessary, and once they establish that Trump won’t be going anywhere, they can refuse to try to pass any bills with the excuse that he would just veto them.
I guarantee you that even if the Democrats take both houses of Congress with a three-quarters majority — far more than is necessary to do any damn thing they please — they won’t impeach Trump, they won’t make any meaningful attempt to reverse any of the Republican bills which have been pushed through, and they’ll still manage to okay all Republican nominees to every position. Why would they do otherwise? People like you are always willing to justify and excuse everything they do — like Trump, they could literally shoot somebody in public and get away with it, because Democratic tribalists only care about voting out Republicans. The only thing the Democrats might do in the event that they retake Congress is try to stop Trump’s trade war, and that’s because most of their donors are horrified that the trade war is actually costing them money.
F.O. wrote:
It’s somewhat inevitable. The Medicare-for-all plan is good for the vast majority of Americans, but politicians who support it are risking alienating voters with ties (even if it’s mere employment) with the medical insurance sector. The result is you cannot please everyone, so trying to do as little as possible can ensure that you’re not ejected from power. Voters say they hate politicians who act like this, but continue to reward those who do this anyway.
To be fair, Republicans never been against growing deficits. They’ve always said they were but they have also always acted otherwise.