I refused to pay any attention to the news yesterday, the first anniversary of the MAGA riot and insurrection. I was just so sure that the Democrats would be taking the event very seriously and working hard to bring justice to the criminals (one of whom is still preparing to run for president in 2024), so, as they assure me, nothing would happen because they’re so earnestly and quietly working behind the scenes.
Nope. It’s hard to believe the Democrats can be this tone-deaf.
Following a solemn discussion of imperiled American democracy between the Librarian of Congress and historians, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) chose to commemorate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by inviting the cast of Hamilton to give a virtual performance with the production value of a tinny Zoom call. The musical’s creator Lin-Manuel Miranda said to his C-SPAN audience, “We should never take our rights and liberties for granted. That’s what I wrote about in the song ‘Dear Theodosia’ from Hamilton.” Cast members, all in separate locations and out of costume, appeared via videoconference on a projector screen in the Capitol. They sang the earnest song straight into the camera, some via visible headphones in their ears. The disconnect between the musical and the severity of the Capitol riot called to mind the celebrity coalition that produced the reviled “Imagine” pandemic video. As one Twitter user quipped, “This is worse than the insurrection.” New York Times reporter Astead Wesley wrote, “We owe Gal Gadot an apology.”
I get so much spam email from Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer because I once donated a small sum to the Democratic party, and I am totally sick of them and their histrionic headlines and pointless posturing. Sit down and shut up, because they’re just driving me away from ever supporting that party any further. Local candidates, yes; the occasional progressive candidate elsewhere, sure; Democrats as a party, nope.
You left out how much the Democrats rushed to embrace and shake hands with Dick Cheney yesterday just because Cheney said he was “disappointed” with modern Republican leadership regarding the January 6 attack on the Capitol (although, he doesn’t quite say in which ways he’s disappointed). Because rehabilitating the reputation of Republican war criminals is just a thing that that Democrats do, all in the name of civility politics. Can’t wait for 10 years from now when Democratic leadership will be doing everything they can to remind us how good were under Trump.
I wouldn’t fret overmuch. These are the end days for the Democratic party.
When I get letters from Pelosi or Schumer or the DNC, I send no money and write on the request form that they will get no money from me until they can guarantee that not one penny will go to Manchin or Senema.
I put that in the envelope and and send that back.
Instead I send to individual progressive candidates.
They’re not useless to the military-industrial complex and their other donors. But yes, and yes to kome’s comment too. Lauding Cheney was horrific.
If you ever get involved with the Democratic Party on a local level, you will see that the corruption runs all the way down.
The Dems are whipped dogs. Cowed after decades of being trashed in the right-wing media as immoral, soft-on-crime, Communists who sell aborted baby parts, allow sexual perverts (i.e. LGBTQ) to molest our children, ban Christianity, emasculate our military, and tax hard-working Americans (i.e. whites) into destitution some they can buy the votes of “undesirables” (i.e. nonwhites) via welfare. Rather than put up any sort of fight, they instead counted on The Process and the supposed rationality of American people (HA!) to save them. Now, as fascism has become mainstream via the Republican party and the federal courts are staked with Christian theocrats, they are utterly CLUELESS about how to stop our imminent fall into dictatorship because doing so might mean ignoring their precious Constitution, The Process, and “decorum.”
Even as they and the people they claim to support are dragged off to death camps, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden will say “At least we took the moral high road.”
I see I was right in refusing to watch any Jan 6 anniversary stuff yesterday. It seems every day is an “important” anniversary of something. And I am right there with you on the endless spam from the Democratic party. I’ve also been giving to individual progressive candidates. No, I do not need an official party membership card; I have voted Democratic since I started to vote at 21 many years ago. So did my late parents. But enough is enough.
As to corruption all the way down, Hillary, I live in a town so Republican that most years no Democrats even bother to run for local office, and our local government has been totally corrupt for many years. Perhaps politicians of both established parties often have to be corrupt to be in the game. Soon our town will be nothing but overpriced condos and corporate contractors ripping out the few natural areas left. Especially egregious are those right next to the river that has been flooding more frequently due to global warming. But money and greed always and everywhere talk.
Like you, PJ, I am discouraged and disgusted.
At least Biden came out swinging. It’s well past time Pelosi and Schumer either took the fight to the Republicans or retired.
oops. meant PZ…sorry!
And here in Canada we are just worried about new US Civil War .
Sounds familiar. I seem to recall a lot of assurances that someone in the FBI was Doing Something that would Fix Everything for about four years or so.
@6 I hope they are not building houses on the flood plain,like what they do over here in England.
For the last 5 years, I have been in state of what I can only call “subconscious panic.” During Trump’s regime I tried to get through life as best I could, but as he and his followers tore down what passed for democracy and progress in this shitty country, I started to become more and more terrified and I hated the fact that there was nothing practical I could to stop it.
Trump’s election was the nightmare scenario of the rise of a fascist America foretold by Margaret Atwood, Robert Heinlein, and countless other authors and screenwriters. However, the best left wing America could mange were meaningless “Resist” hashtags and parading down the street with hats shaped like vulvas.. (Wow, that will show them!). Meanwhile the alt..ight., gathering supporters and arms, pledged their support for their spray-tanned Messiah and his agenda.
Them COVID came along and not only did they bungle the response, armed redneck thugs stormed statehouses of local governments that attempted even the most basic measures to contain the plague. Then George Floyd was murdered, and Trump sent DHS goons to round-up protestors. All the while the best the Dems could muster was two impeachments that were doomed to fail from the get-go.
Then Jan 6 happened. Once again, all we are getting from the Dems–THE PARTY IN POWER–is just more of the same. Loads of rhetorical bravado, no real punishment.
The last four years have left me literally sick and tired of everything. I’m done of playing by “the rules.” I’m done hoping and waiting for The Process__broken, outdated and impotent–to dole out the inevitable wrist-slaps to Trump and his disciples–assuming the Republicans don’t retake Congress in November and end the investigations. I don’t give a fucking shit what our 18th century Constitution (which gives the whites supremacists and theocrats protection) decrees! I want the American right-wing gone, and I well past caring how it gets done.
I want to stop being in a constant state of panic.
This is where a prolonged lesser-of-two-evils strategy gets you. Chummy pals with Dick Cheney, who should have been sentenced to life in prison at the Hague, by the way, instead of walking around as a free man.
I swear, the Vicar’s rants against the Democratic party are continually justified by the actions of the Democrats themselves. At least this is their last pathetic gasp of national relevance, soon to be washed away for good in ’22 and ’24.
In the first Sherlock Holmes novel there is a scene early on where Holmes has written that a logician could deduce the possibility of an ocean or a waterfall without seeing either one, merely by observing a drop of water.
A logician of that level of perfection would have been able to deduce the current state of American politics here in 2021 from the fact that in 1992, Bill Clinton the publicly anti-reform, anti-populist pro-corporate candidate was permitted to retain the Democratic Party’s nomination for President despite the Gennifer Flowers scandal.
It would have taken a much less perfect logician to deduce the descent to the current level from Pelosi’s refusal in 2007 to follow through on either impeaching Bush or forcing an end to the Iraq War — by then, it was pretty obvious that there was deep rot.
By the time of Obama’s reelection campaign, you didn’t even have to be a logician, the Democrats were obviously not concerned with fixing anything or giving even the slightest nod to the base.
When Hillary Clinton’s ridiculous and repellent cult of personality drove the party and the country off a cliff by insisting that she get the 2016 nomination, anybody with more than one functioning braincell could tell that the party was doomed and that it would take the country with it.
At this point, they’ve even demonstrated that they have no sense of self-preservation. Manchin and Sinema are going to be put up against the wall and shot with the rest of them when the Republicans hold their second coup attempt. It’s a short life, but a merry one, when the party refuses to live up to its nominal principles.
And, frankly, good riddance. All these centrists have been traitors all along. They took control, they’ve been given everything they asked for at every turn, and they still screwed up absolutely everything and gave the Republicans their every request. Contrary to centrist claims, steering rightward didn’t stop the right wing from calling the Democrats commies and socialists, it just depressed turnout as the broken campaign promises stacked up and nobody paid any penalties for enormous, epochal mistakes like Iraq and Libya and the creation of DHS and the PATRIOT Act and the FREEDOM Act and ever-increasing Pentagon budgets and all the rest of it. Letting Manchin derail everything and abuse his authority for the sake of his horrible children — which has been going on since the Obama administration, it’s not something new — didn’t get him to concede a damned thing no matter how desperate the situation has become. And now we all get to suffer because it was more important to — futilely, it never worked for a second — try to avoid letting Fox News call Democrats Marxists than it was to actually do the right thing.
Great jorb.
Interesting to see the whining and the moaning and the defeatism from the sad sacks.
—
Yeah, right. Shoulda gone for the greater-of-two-evils, instead.
(After all, it could only be better had Trump won a second term, right?)
—
… and winning the election. :)
The Vicar @ 14
Hey! This isn’t Coach Z’s fault. (This time.)
@8- maireaine46
Usually they mangle his last name. PJ has a better ring than Meyerz. PJ Meirz.
Anyway I was disgusted with the DNC back in ‘08 over their response to Florida delegates after the legislature decided to move the primary date. I emailed a nastygram and got a shit reply then endless spam from Howard Fucking Dean. I would still go on to vote for Obama twice and Hillary. But I was glad the Russians hacked the DNC and exposed their skullduggery toward Sanders.
When I read the thread title I knew Vicar would be here. Catnip.
Would I vote for Biden again? Yes. Do I not care much for him? Yes.
@15
How about neither evil, greater or lesser? You are so insistent that we vote for evil in some way, but it seems like that’s not going to do anyone any favors. I don’t know if you’ve bothered to look around the country (or even just outside of your own privileged little bubble), but we really aren’t any better in any materially meaningful way than we were under Trump. Not only are we not any better, we’re getting worse. And Biden has had more than enough time and opportunity to do things within Executive power, the Democratically controlled Congress has had time and opportunity to do things within Legislative power, and yet… we’re still getting worse. What material good have the Democrats actually accomplished for anyone so far?
Kind of hard to celebrate that the Orange Terrorist is no longer occupying (a word I use deliberately) the White House when, to just take a random example, over 10,000 zip codes in the country still don’t have sufficient vaccine supply and yet the rhetoric from the White House around why there’s still a sizeable portion of the population unvaccinated is because of right wing antivax conspiracies as opposed to their explicit refusal to work with governors and local officials to get vaccine supplies distributed. At least, hard to celebrate for those of us who are affected by politics and can’t afford to treat it as a meaningless team sport the way you do.
Your team – and by extension you, with your sycophantic fawning over them – are responsible for enabling the outright evil of the right-wing. Maybe, just maybe, it’d be kinda neat if you stopped doing that. Kinda sucks that we’re going to surpass one million COVID deaths within the next two months at the rate we’re going.
To Progressives who voted for Trump in 2016, helping ensure that Trump got to appoint 3 justices to SCOTUS – still think it was worth it?
Progressives who thought they’d “teach centrists a lesson” in 2016 didn’t realize that this isn’t a game where the rules stay the same no matter how many times you lose.
It’s a war where if your side loses too many battles because you sit back and watch the centrists fight them alone, the other side finally tips the balance, and eventually puts you under armed guard, sets up surveillance, takes control of all information, and brainwashes all children born from that point onward to support the regime.
“Let me tell you people, ‘fore you cash in your checks — They say “America First, ” but they mean “America Next!”
–Woody Guthrie
@Kome
How confident are you that progressives are also not evil? Because they say so? We literally have authoritarians who call anyone they disagree with fascist and those same idiots are calling democrats “lesser evil”. To these people nothing short of authoritarian rule where they are in charge is evil.
Given the choice between people who called Biden a fascist for what exactly? and also some have sided with Trump and also acted as another branch of anti democratic propaganda and also prop up fantasies of communism ignoring the damage that’s done and democrats? Whats my choice? Democrats of course. Often times democrats are spineless, useless and poor with communication but they have successes and got some things passed. Given the choices its either an ineffectual and braindead progressive movement which has been hijacked by radicals (not the good kind) and never gotten anything useful passed or accomplished versus flawed individuals getting things done occasionally…the choice is clear. “Progressivism” is the greater evil here.
@PZ
AT least you acknowledge local elections. That’s the real fight. Progressives complain about how spineless democrats are but fail to recognize that local voting is how you build power. I cant stand the usual tired “lets get mad at the democrats for being spineless and ineffectual while ignoring how we are even more spineless and ineffectual but hopefully people wont notice because fuck the lesser of the two evils!!!” bullshit but at least you acknowledge that local elections are important.
@Kome
OH also forgot to add, you asked what good the democrats have actually done? This could only be said by someone so fucking privileged. Biden literally cut childhood poverty by 25% and obamacare gave millions health insurance who didn’t have it before. Statements like this just reaffirms that to be a progressive you have to be politically brain dead or be from a position of privilege.
Also you want to bring up covid? Do I have to remind you that it was the progressives who acted as another branch of disinformation propaganda during the election? Seth Rich assassination conspiracy, DNC stealing the primary, Lee Camp and that awful hit piece on Russia Today disseminated throughout progressive leftist sphere about having definitive evidence of Clinton stealing delegates (which was bullshit), about how she was going to start world war 3? Should I go on? Should I mention the ones some of which are in this very thread who voted for Trump because they wanted to see the democrats suffer?
Yea sit down and educate yourself. I’m tired of seeing so called progressives blame the democrats ad nausea. This shit is on you. Its on us, because despite being all pro democratic party now in the past I was just like you, then I grew up and realized that progressives are garbage who instead of actually wanting to change the world for the better just want to complain endlessly about democrats. We couldn’t even get our boy elected into the primary. We failed that shit twice and then made stupid excuses about why he lost and blamed the democrats again.
kome @18:
Not an option.
You really should understand that the phrase “lesser evil” relates to a dilemma, that is, the entirety of available choices (obviously, it can be generalised to “the least evil”).
The least bad choice.
It’s not me who is insistent, it’s reality. One has to accept it.
Already been through the applicable reasoning, during the election process, but (again) basically: it was going to be Trump or Biden. There was no viable third outcome.
So… one could have voted, or not voted.
Either way, it was gonna be Biden or Trump.
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PS logicalcat, you’ve sure misread kome. But then, you’re clearly a clueless dolt.
(heh)
@ justanotherguy, #19
Just who the fuck are you talking too? I don’t know any progressives who voted for Trump. A lot of shitty “centrists” who just had to full-fash because
ladypartsEEEEEEMMMMMAAAIIIIILLLLSSSS, sure, but the only human being I’ve ever seen claiming to be progressive who also claims that Trump was better than Clinton is the Vicar… and I’m not entirely sure that the Vicar isn’t some sort of digital rutabaga with mommy issues.Centrists… fight? Centrists never, ever get their hands dirty. That’s why centrists vote for and support fascists- the fascists do the dirty work, and the centrists get to claim they don’t know where all the mass graves filled with the people that both the fascists and the centrists despise came from.
@ logicalcat, #20
Can’t speak for any “authoritarians,” but I’m pretty sure the reason the actual leftists in the comments on this blog call you a fascist is that you only pop up here to bash progressives and defend fascist double-murderers. Oh, and whine that we’re driving the “sane leftists” to become fascists. Can’t forget that.
I don’t think Biden is a fascist, and I don’t think Clinton was a fascist, but you? It doesn’t get more fascist than writing apologetics for the teen idol of wannabe rightwing deathsquadies.
Pelosi’s inviting the Hamilton cast to commemorate the January 6 “incident” (Ted Cruz’s revised term, not mine) reflects this country’s ongoing worship of and insatiable appetite for celebrity nonsense. It’s no wonder that Schwarzenegger and Trump (both narcissistic power-hungry skirt chasers) were elected to high office, and it will likely be ever thus. At least Pelosi knows where her bread is buttered on the Democratic side.
@18
While I am all for “Vote none of the above.” theme from Brewster’s Millions I tend to suspect that the outcome will be the same as in the movie – someone will get rich off it, and it won’t be me, but nothing else will f-ing change at all. When the whole government, whether intended or otherwise, is stacked so that you only have two parties, the fascist party, and the centrist party, and everything is looking a damn lot like voting in China, the “only” thing you can do is try to vote for the least fascist option, then watch them rip the rug out from under you when they realize he/she might actually win, and the less insane party might be forced to “do something” under them. But, its what we have.
Otherwise, you sound like the “conservative parent” in the latest Jubilee vid, who basically described America as, “The greatest country in the world because of all the things we could do/solve.”, while utterly failing to grasp that this is like buying a toy, and keeping it in the package, then dreaming of all the fun things you could do with it, if only you torn it out, and actually used it, but you can’t, because, “By gosh! if you removed it from the packaging and actually played with the toy it would ‘lose value’!”
Its a damn strange mindset – that you appreciate something based on what it could do, could be used for, etc., but f-ing refuse to actually do any of those things, because doing so isn’t “safe” and might, “devalue” the thing you prize so much. Argh!!!
The face? Singular? Of the Democratic party? (Diverse multi-factional group.)
Is that face Joe Bidens face or that of Kamala Harris? Or of Stacy Abrams or AOC or Bernie Sanders? Or Nancy Pelosi’s or Elizabeth Warrens or Castro’s – Juilan not Fidel’s. Or is it Andrew Yang’s face?
Or who knows maybe Oprah Winfrey’s if we take the fight celebrity with celebrity route?
Is it not an amorphous thing. A metaphorical donkey. An ass at times.. Huh.
Is it not an ever changing face? A face that can be shaped by those that belong to it?
If you can say it really has any face at all..any one face as opposed to mountain or crystal-like many faces.
Defeatism. Tell me again, how that’s going to help improve anything or do anything except help the opponents here?
A Civil war? Lets avoid killing millions of people if we can help it please.
What do you want the face of the Democratic party to be? Who do you want it to be?
Then how do we best get there? From where we are?
@ 14. The Vicar (via Freethoughtblogs) : If centrists are “traitors” in your view then what does that make Trump & his crew of reich wing Cultists who launched the defeated Attempted Coup of Jan 6th and his deluded, toxic, terroristic idol worshippers and enablers? Trump who you thought – incorrectly -would beat Biden in 2020 and, apparently, I gather would have voted for in preference to Biden?
Oh & do you think HRC would have been worse than Trump had she been Electroal College (s)elected (as well as winning the popular vote elected) in 2016? Do you think SCOTUS would be as it is had she been elected in 2016 and Roe vs Wade wher eit si etc .. ha dshe been elected in2016?
William Butler Yeats, First verse (?) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming
(Perhaps I am among the worst since I feel driven by “passionate intensity” or perhaps not. Dunno.)
Seems to me “the centre” is an ever shifting band of cloud blown by ferocious winds. Winds that can change direction maybe.
What used to be “centre” has already shifted (sadly ve-eery far toright by socio-political “tides” driven not by natural gravity but the likes of Murdoch brain-washing) so we know the centre is fluid and can be pushed by Overton window moving…
Here’s a good article describing the people I’m talking about:
Why Some of the Smartest Progressives I Know Will Vote for Trump Over Hillary by Yves Smith
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/wall-street-2016-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-213931
Progressives who now decry Democrats who welcomed Cheney’s recent support against Trump should consider that there never would have been a VP Cheney if many of them hadn’t voted for Nader in 2000. You remember, Nader, right?
“A bumbling Texas governor would galvanize the environmental community as never before.”
— Ralph Nader, one week before election night, 2000, saying it would be good for W to defeat Gore
Progressives who voted for Nader helped bring about Iraq as well.
Progressives are not wrong about Centrist politicians’ long history of betraying their supporters’ best interests. Not at all.
But there are far worse things than ordinary corruption. Far worse. Trump has proved that. Dog whistling to white supremacists. Staying silent while a foreign power uses counterintelligence methods to help you get elected. Using the foreign aid budget to extort a foreign country to publicly investigate your main political rival. Pressuring the Chief of Staff to to order the military to violently crack down on BLM protesters. Spreading lies of election fraud to pressure officials to overturn an election.
Still think both parties are the same?
@maireaine46 Towns don’t just spontaneously become overwhelmingly Republican. In many or most cases the Dems have abdicated – or worse. And of course it doesn’t help that the Dem elite have enriched themselves despite their dismal performance on every level.
btw, look what happened in my district: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/us/politics/biden-speech-fred-upton.html
for context, we are the narrowest red district in MI, and Upton is vile on many issues. He was also a leader in the fight to defund Obamacare. (Supposedly Obama/Biden’s signature achievement.) Biden’s got zero principles, and btw imagine how you’d feel if you, like I, volunteered your time trying to get the Dem elected only to find out that Biden made a cool $200K campaigning for the Republican? Like a sucker, right?
@justanotherguy – blaming Nader voters for GWB is redonk given the circumstances of that campaign, and it also enables continued Democratic abdication and corruption.* Yes, the GOP are cheaters, and also yes in hindsight Gore should not have given up the fight. (In hindsight.) This podcast is very illuminating:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fiasco-bush-v-gore/id1534780078
Blaming progressive voters, instead of the politicians who waste hundreds of millions (or, in HRC’s case, more than a billion) on failed campaigns, is facile and, frankly, undemocratic.
there is nothing I could say that has not been said. I will let history pick up the pieces.
If you do not like the politics or the choices that arise then run yourself, organise and work with others to get what you want to see happen happen. I will admit that I do not have the ability to win peeople over to any cause nor convince many of much of anything. If you run and offer a better chioce then any other OK. if you just are going to carp about everyone while doing nothing else then you are just fan who goes to all the games and watches and bitches about everything everyone did wrong. and no one pays any attention to.and effects the game not one bit.
@ ^ hillaryrettig1 : “redonk”” eh? I disagree.
When it comes to a painfully close race in a system that’s badly flawed and broken. A small difference can make a huge diffference,
Nader was never going to become POTUS but he coudl -and did make that slight spoiler edge for Dubya George II.
There is ample blame to go around. Including to Gore himself -and including Nader & the “make the perfect the enemy of the good” ideological purists too. We can point to an huge number of things that put GWB in power despite losing the popular vote. Not least the system itself which enables such spoilers rather than a having preferential voting where you can vote, say 1 Nader, 2 Gore , 3 Bush and have that count like you can in Oz sending the centrists a message and stuillgettingthe les sbad of the two realistic options. But yes, Nader wa sthe starw the broke the camel’s back here -and he knew it and could ahev chosen otherwise. I do blame him for that.
D’oh. Sorry for the italics fail and typos. Hope y’all get the gist anyhow. I suck at typing.
If Progressives want to see how they let Trump in the door by not turning out to vote in 2016, just take a look at http://imgur.com/TOGIbcP
Look at how much liberal turnout dropped from the previous election. So that Trump, who got fewer votes than either McCain or Romney, was able to squeak in.
That’s in part because in 2016 the liberal voters were so divided by the bitter 2016 Democrat presidential primary.
The 2020 election wasn’t even close in terms of popular vote, with Biden winning by over 7 million votes. However, it would have taken fewer than 10000 votes flipping in just 3 states to give the race to Cheetolini in the electoral college.
Think about that. After having his popularity never climb above 50%; after humiliating the US for 4 years with his stupidity, racism, misogyny, etc.; after presiding over the most corrupt and incompetent administration ever; after a tax cut that was a transparent giveaway to the wealthiest; after allowing a pandemic to take hold and kill hundreds of thousands of citizens…after all this, he still came within a large auditorium-sized audience of winning!
And it 2022 and 2024, after Rethug legislatures eviscerate what little voter protection was left, it’s going to be even harder for Dems. But no matter how hard it is, we have to win. We have to win every race we can, and then curbstomp these fascist motherfuckers back into the darkest recesses of history from which they came.