The next election is going to be a doozy. The Republicans have been pulling out all the stops to claim that the last one was fraudulent, and you just know that the only time a Republican will accept an election result is if a Democrat loses. Every election is going to be surrounded with a cloud of lawsuits, and further, they imagine that victory means they get to trample over the law even more. Steve Bannon is already planning to lock Joe Biden up.
Fringe conservative Steve Bannon announced that the 2023 Republican agenda, should they win the House and Senate back in 2022, will be to impeach and arrest President Joe Biden.
Newt Gingrich went even further. He’s going to lock up every congressperson who had the temerity to investigate the 6 January insurrection.
Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, stoked outrage on Sunday by predicting members of the House committee investigating the Capitol attack will be imprisoned if Republicans retake the chamber this year.
Do they even realize these are extraordinarily anti-democratic proposals? You can dislike Biden and the Democrats, but doing their job is not criminal activity — unlike, say, using a political office to enrich themselves or conspiring to revolt if an election doesn’t go their way. Meanwhile, over on Fox News, we see the end product of this kind of thinking. Tucker Carlson Wonders Why the U.S. Would Side With Ukraine’s Fledgling Democracy Against Putin’s Russia. Charming.
“Why is it disloyal to side with Russia but loyal to side with Ukraine?” Carlson asked. “They’re both foreign countries that don’t care anything about the United States. Kind of strange.”
Carlson’s comments came as Russia has steadily massed troops on Ukraine’s border over the last few months. The latest assessment by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry estimates that there are 127,000 Russian troops in the region. In response, up to 8,500 U.S. troops have been put on heightened alert for a possible deployment, the Pentagon confirmed Monday, with most of them intended to aid NATO forces.
Such countermeasures are pointless, Carlson argued, because Ukraine, a fledgling democracy, is “strategically irrelevant” to the U.S.
I remember when Republicans were fanatically anti-Russia, and they defended their position by advocating for Democracy and the American Way of Life; we were the forces of Good, that shining light on a hill, and they were the evil empire. Now Tucker Carlson declares No rational person could defend a war with Russia over Ukraine. Nobody thinks a war like that would make America safer or stronger or more prosperous.
I wouldn’t suggest we should go to war, again — we’ve been rather quick on the trigger to plunge into wars — but there’s a difference between that and thinking we should side with an openly tyrannical dictator like Putin. It’s nice that they aren’t even pretending these wars aren’t about profit and gain, but that they’re even baffled by someone who’d take the side of a democratic underdog against an oppressive authoritarian invasion is revealing.
But then it’s become obvious that Republicans don’t like democracy and are eager to set up their own authoritarian dictatorship.
Even if they like that idea, though, they should look at their prospective emperors. There isn’t an Augustus among them, just a lot of bumbling poseurs and deeply stupid demagogues.
The Republicans don’t have to be better than Biden so long as Biden refuses to provide any meaningful leadership (and as is so frequently mentioned online, Biden owes me and everyone else that $600 he promised and keeping that kind of promise is Politics 101).
Voters are very good at punishing incompetence no matter the consequences. When the Republicans take over Congress in 2023, Biden should be held accountable but, like HRC in 2016, we’ll talk about something else instead, the Democrat Party leadership will remain unchanged (i.e., corrupt), and this country will sink further into self-induced quagmire.
Republicans are obviously not the solution to this mess, but in a duopoly you only get two choices and we’re now locked into a permanent cycle of throwing out whoever’s in charge every four years.
When the Durham Report is finally released (assuming Garland doesn’t suppress it), the FBI, our news media and the Democrat party will be destroyed. You’ll be able to argue that Democrats are still better than the incredibly even more corrupt Republicans, but that’s like arguing over which smells worse: a pile of pigshit or a pile of cowshit.
P.S. The 1/6 cmte will live alongside HUAC in infamy. They are way over their skis and the evidence that FBI embeds were key to escalating the protests is becoming overwhelming. The Democrats have become a political Ponzi scam where every misstep is doubled down on. They cannot admit error or their bizarre house of neoliberal cards (and the stock market) will come crashing down to earth.
P.P.S. PZ I love ya but we are never going to agree about most of this so long as you take Democrat messaging at face value. Democrats kicked all the honest people out of their party and are now run by serial liars. Take what they say with a grain of salt and keep your hand on your wallet at all times.
Keep drinking that Koolaid.
The Ukraine crisis has nothing to do with supporting fledgling democracy.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/14/ukraine-the-truth/
‘Moscow’s official line on Ukraine—and it should not be dismissed just because that’s what it is—is that the U.S. has spent about $ 5 billion backing “regime change” in that sad, bankrupt country, ultimately resulting in a coup d’etat (or putsch) in Kiev in February 2014 in which neo-fascists played a key role. The coup occurred because the U.S. State Department and Pentagon hoped to replace the democratically elected administration with one that would push for Ukraine’s entry into NATO, a military alliance designed from its inception in 1949 to challenge Russia. The ultimate intent was to evict the Russian Black Sea Fleet from the bases it’s maintained on the Crimean Peninsula for over 230 years.
‘Personally, I believe this interpretation is basically true, and that any rational person should recognize that it’s true. Victoria Nuland, the neocon thug who serves as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and is the key official shaping U.S. Ukraine policy, openly admitted to an “international business conference on Ukraine” in December 2013 that Washington had “invested more than 5 billion dollars to help Ukraine achieve [the development of democratic institutions] and other goals.”
‘She repeated this assertion in an CNN interview, and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has proudly reiterated it as well on cable news. The unspoken goal was Ukraine’s membership in NATO.
‘(Imagine if a top-ranking official in the Russian Foreign Ministry were to boast of a $ 5 billion Russian investment in undermining the Mexican or Canadian government, with an aim towards incorporating one of those countries into an expanding military alliance. John McCain and Fox News would be demanding the immediate nuking of Moscow.)’
I remember speaker Tip O’Neill, back when Democrats stood for something. The current crop are GOP- lite.
Looking into US politics from abroad, it is obvious the establishment Democrats are neoliberals who have no problem with doing bad compromises that give the Republicans a lot, while they are quite aggressive fighting off progressive challengers. When they are challenged by the Republicans, they immediately back down.
-There is also the question of competence; they seem not to have learned much from the 2016 election failure. Everything is about getting the undecided center-right voters (by warning about the Republicans), not about giving voters a positive reason to vote instead of staying home.
And one influential political advisor recently said the problem is not the leadership (of the democrats) the problem was the followers. With such attitudes, the Democrats will remain never-winners.
@1 markgisleson I agree with much of what you say.
i finally heard (sorry can’t remember source) a plausible theory why Garland is dragging his feet so much when he should be aggressively prosecuting the insurrectionists: he’s not a prosecutor. He’s a judge, used to having essentially unlimited time to ponder the subtleties. Biden failed us again by not appointing a prosecutor to the crucial position of AG.
Where was Carlson when Iraq invade Kuwait. We could have saved ourselves a lot of money and casualties over the years.
Siding with national sovereignty didn’t used to be controversial. Though what exactly we’re entitled to do about it is a different question.
Republicans have never had a problem with dictators so long as they weren’t communist dictators.
markgislen@1 “Democrat party” Please edit your spelling if this is unintentional. I reflexively stop reading when I see “Democrat” used as an adjective. Whether it’s merely ignorant or intentionally disparaging, I don’t have the time for it.
markgisleson@1,
Americans should be so lucky. Following their acceptance of Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 Presidential election, Republicans are engaged in a full-scale attempt to ensure their party’s permanent rule by vote suppression, gerrymandering, and partisan control of the electoral process. If you don’t know that, you’re a fool. If you do know it but are pretending not to, or that it doesn’t matter, you’re a fascist.
I notice you don’t actually cite any of this “overwhelming” evidence. And what if the FBI was involved? Surely that would only reinforce the need to investigate? And the FBI certainly weren’t working under the orders of Biden, the Committee, or any other Democratic Party politicians.
Didn’t your minders inform you that that’s a tell? Careless, very careless.
nomaduk@3,
I agree that the protection of democracy is never a goal of American foreign policy, unless it happens to serve elite American interests. But whatever the truth about events in Kiev in 2014 (and there were fascists, and great power intervention, on both sides), the article you quote is blatantly dishonest.
Did you notice the sleight of hand there? First, the statement that the unspoken goal was Ukraine’s membership of NATO – which certainly wouldn’t have been included if the writer could produce any explicit announcement of this goal. Then the comparison with a hypothetical Russian official boasting of an investment in undermining the Canadian or Mexican government with an aim towards incorporating one of those countries into an expanding military alliance. But Nuland did not boast about aiming to incorporate Ukraine in NATO. Incidentally, the article is from April 2015. Here we are nearly 7 years later, and Ukraine is not a member of NATO. If that was the aim of the coup against Yanukovich, it seems to have been a failure.
nomaduk@3–
That is the most transparent piece of pro-Russian glitterdust I’ve seen in a long time. There’s plenty of reason to be suspicious of any $5B offerings from the US, but I’m not sure how you can condemn it with a straight face given at the same time Russia negotiated a $15B package to bail Ukraine out of an economic crisis (that Russia had itself a hand in when it hiked the price of natural gas to E. Europe over the previous 2 years).
I won’t go into every problem in your post, but it’s blatant propaganda to the claim neo-fascists were key figures when the 2014 protests included groups from all over the political spectrum, including human rights groups, radical feminist groups, unions, left-wingers, and anarcho-syndicalists — and the counter-protesters also included plenty of reprehensible groups like the Night Wolves, the Don Cossacks, and the Titushky (‘titushki raid’ has now entered Ukrainian language to mean violence by government contractors in civilian clothing — ironic given the person whose name was co-opted claimed he was in favour of the 2014 protest movement). The far right/neo-fascist movement has failed dismally in post-2014 Ukraine. In the last election, sensing a rout, the three main ultra-right parties combined to pool their power into a single voting bloc…that won 2.2% of the vote and no seats at all. (Not that Ukraine, or indeed any country, should take this as a reason for complacency. Fascism is a vicious, oddly contagious political disease.)
Meanwhile, Russian media keeps calling all Ukrainians who don’t want Russia in control of their country “fascists”. So why did you choose to single out this term as well?
Last point: since WW2, only one nation has repeatedly invaded and occupied other European countries, and it is not American or EU troops massing on the border right now. Why is it, do you think, that almost every ex-Soviet state joined NATO as soon as they could? Why do you think, after years of happily staying out of NATO, countries like Sweden and Finland have recently changed tack and are now beginning to move towards joining as full members? Why do you think the four countries that joined the CSTO military alliance with Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet are, with the exception of Armenia which has made genuine progress in human rights over recent years, all brutally repressive regimes?
For a little reality, how much of a threat to Russia is Ukraine?
About zero. Ukraine is a much smaller country and has been having huge problems getting itself together as a functioning country.
How much of a threat is Russia to Ukraine. A lot. They’ve already attacked Ukraine once and are occupying the eastern part of the country in a wrecked twilight zone. They also took over the Crimean peninsula at the same time and made it Russian.
Russia is a far larger country with a very long history of attacking and stealing the territory of anyone around them. During World War II, they attacked Finland, ethnically cleansed the territory of Karelia that they seized, and made it part of Russia. Plus all the Eastern European satellites including as far as East Germany and all the central Asian states.
Russia has a long history as an imperialistic and colonial power and this is just the latest incident.
Okay, let’s say that they successfully impeach and arrest Biden (an almost impossible task but let’s go with it). That means Kamala is president. Then what? Impeach and arrest her too? Do they plan on just continuing this until they magically get an un-elected Republican president? That’s not how this works.
When Putin and Russia attacked eastern Ukraine and took over the Crimean peninsula, their thinking was that Ukraine was going to simply collapse. And they could walk in and take over.
It wasn’t a bad idea. Ukraine was almost a failed state that was having a hard time making the transition from Soviet state to a modern nation state.
Instead, much to most people’s surprise, Ukraine managed to pull itself together and has been making progress towards being an independent working country.
Putin, apparently not having many hobbies, seems likely to try it again anyway.
The principle here is whether a country such as Ukraine has the right to self determination, self government, and freedom from conquest from a neighboring country that just happens to have a larger army.
Or not.
@12 Ouabache — Who cares about the rules when you can just rewrite them.
Poking around “doing my own research” on Ukrainian issues, I saw “Has the west fallen for Putin’s tricks in Ukraine?” at the Grauniad, by one Keir Giles of Chatham House (aka the Royal Institute of International Affairs).
Though the article raises a few good points and makes some questionable assertions, mostly it made me wonder about “Chatham House” itself, which I had only vaguely heard of before and could find remarkably little about from web searches. Could anybody more UK-institute-aware please describe where they fit on the political scene without promoting their internship opportunities?
In reply to a couple of comments I should probably clarify my use of “Democrat Party.”
I have literally written published letters to the editor (1980s), social media comments (1990s), and blog posts (2000s) about the history of “Democrat Party.” I’ve forgotten the guy’s name now, but the deliberate use of “Democrat” instead of “Democratic” goes back to either the 1952 or 1956 Republican national convention. And yes, using this variant was a solid tell for decades. For a news person to use it meant they spent way too much time reading rightwing materials. Democrat Party was a deliberate insult.
No longer. This is the democRAT party. Joe Biden, Barrack Obama and the Clintons have all revealed themselves to be grifters. All entered office with little money, all are now unspeakably wealthy. Study after study shows there is an absolute disconnect between what the American people want and the legislation passed by Congress no matter which party is in charge or holds the White House.
No matter how evil you think Republicans to be, you need to understand that most people who vote Republican only do so because the Democrats disgust them. Since the neoliberals (starting with Clinton) took over the party, Democrats routinely SMEAR anyone who disagrees with them. How bizarre is it that a political party would defame its left wing, trash talk rural voters (as if rural America is 100% Trump when nowhere is 100% anything), and mock people with traditional beliefs? And then whine when they lose elections because the idea of growing their tent never occurs to them. They just assume that no matter how viciously their candidates kneecap their internal rivals to win their primaries, they can order everyone back into their tent afterwards. Not. How. Things. Work.
I am a former officer of the Des Moines Democrat Party (technically the Polk County Democratic Central Committee). I was the Iowa liaison to Kennedy in ’80 advance teams working with surrogates (family members/friends campaigning in Iowa for Ted). I was office manager on Roxanne Conlin’s 1982 Iowa gubernatorial primary campaign. I supervised phone banks for Tom Harkin when he because the first Democratic US Senator to get reelected from Iowa.
In Minnesota I worked for Ford Bell’s 1980 DFL primary campaign and was asked to consult with two other candidates who ran for US Senate. In the 2000s I helped set up City Pages “Twin Cities Babelogue,” an online community of blogs by City Pages writers and outsiders. We took CP’s Alexa ranking from the 30,000s to 5,000 in three months and almost exclusively with blog commentary in opposition to the Iraq War which had not yet been authorized by Congress.
I then blogged independently for eight years until I finally gave up and retired from politics in 2011 only to get sucked back in by Bernie in 2016 when I ended up running a Democratic Congressional primary campaign to pick a candidate to run against Paul Ryan.
I think I have paid my dues and am entitled to my opinions. It is characteristic of the faux Democrats/neoliberals that they respond to every criticism with a personal attack. From my perspective, much of the current political mess stems from third-rate neoliberals copying old Fox News strategies and then “improving” on them. Name-calling critics is one of their specialties. (No one was faster to go homophobic in social media than the Russiagaters with their puerile Putin-Trump sitting in a tree… garbage).
Btw, I’ve been calling out Russiagate as pure fraud ever since Robbie Mook tweeted about it in late June/early July of 2016 and I would be eternally grateful to anyone who could help me retrieve my tweets from that period of time because I’d like to start a scrapbook of all the times I’ve been right about this shit.
So you’re a former Dixiecrat whose main issue is racism and you’re upset that LBJ gave up on you and Carter didn’t bring it back into the fold?
markgisleson@16
I’m sure this is factually incorrect. Only a minority of individuals stop at some point (say in early adulthood), take a look at their personal values, and then choose a party. Most accept a political affiliation consistent with their family and wider social environment that simultaneously shapes their values. Granted, there’s drift over time, e.g. with more college-educated Americans identifying as Democrats, more blue collar white Americans identifying as Republicans, and more than ever declaring themselves independent. People may continue to vote for Republicans out of a misguided view that Republicans understand economic issues better, or because Republicans are often very effective campaigners, better at convincing voters that they are kindred spirits by signaling on issues such as guns and religion.
The disgust runs both ways as can be seen in this Pew 2016 survey. But disgust is better explained as the effect rather than the cause of polarization.
I think it would be hard to find anyone to disagree that the Democratic party is remarkably ineffectual for its size, resources, and share of the public. The main disagreement is over how much is unintentional and how much is part of the great “Republicrat” conspiracy. Personally, I think a lot of the explanation is that many Democratic politicians are first of all out of touch with “normal” Americans (including educated Americans who are less interested in politics) and second are much more interested in their career path in government than on the social impact of their decisions.
While the above is mildly disgusting, I don’t think it’s sufficient to convince anyone to vote for a Republican, assuming some basic awareness, unless they also shared specific Republican values, such as a visceral hatred of taxes and regulation, or some cultural affinity (guns, religion, and racism to be blunt). I think the people who are voting for Republicans know what they’re voting for.
Glad Gingrich admitted it. I think that this is one hidden reason why Democrats aren’t leading as strongly as they need to now, fear of nasty retaliation. Not necessarily prison sentences, but a million other dirty tricks, humiliations, obstructionism. I’ve been thinking that there are hidden gotchas, as to why Biden hasn’t done more economic leadership, or block school openings .
I first saw this in Texas during the 1990’s. To play for the other team (blue) is to draw a target on your back. The blues don’t have enough power to do anything but legitimize the reds. I was sorry to see this pattern spread nationwide.
It’s not just politics either. One nasty techbro whom everyone fears crossing is enough to turn an organization into a culture of fear, and block creativity.
markgisleson@16
This is a nonsensical objection, though you’re far from unique in making it. Barrack Obama and both Clintons all have law degrees that would have given them very high earning potential, no not what they earn in speaker fees and book advances, but enough to have net worth in the millions if they had simply invested prudently. Biden’s senate career has been much longer, and his net worth, which I see reported as $8-$9 million is not that remarkable for a public figure.
As an American, I don’t consider wealth to be “unspeakable”. Despite Republican stereotypes, Democrats generally support a market economy and the opportunity to become rich (and JFK and FDR were both very rich). And what about Republicans like recently defeated David Perdue? Does his business career make his wealth more legitimate than a legal career? (to Republicans probably) In any case, he’s also very rich and appears to have operated a more lucrative grift through insider trading (cleared of charges I know) than anyone who simply accepts a large speaker’s fee. If rich people want to pay Hillary Clinton millions to give a speech, that is no more of a “grift” than if they were to pay a high price for a sculpture at auction. The market determines value.
Donald Trump entered life with a boatload of money. Is he more legitimately wealthy than someone who started from a middle class background, earned Ivy League degrees and a JD and built a political career? How is that a “grift”?
hillaryrettig1 @5
Is it too late to make Kamala “Copmala” Harris the AG and Garland the VP?
I was never expecting much from Garland, though I’m willing to be surprised. The whole thing feels like a repeat of the Robert Mueller fantasies. The people in charge of these investigations seem to place a priority on not making waves.
Part of what’s missing in this “analysis” is that backing Ukraine against Russia is basically backing neo-Nazis who want to play “the Reich will rise again.” Those neo-Nazis we, of course, installed by us[1]. And I’m sure, based on their history, eventually we’ll find out all the gory details of three letter agencies backing the unofficial terror attacks Russia has been dealing with.
But dems can only call people Nazis if they voted for Trump.
[1] https://marktaliano.net/eight-years-ago-us-nato-installed-a-neo-nazi-government-in-ukraine-by-prof-michel-chossudovsky/
KG @ #9:
That makes sense, since much of this thread seems straight out of Russian active measures ca. 2016. JFC.
markgisleson @16
The question is what disgusts most Republican voters about the Democrats — is it their fecklessness or is it the fact that POC usually vote Democratic? Race still plays a big role in US politics.
I have noticed something about the current “conservative” authoritarians and the grass roots that support them. while they all seem to be going along with the program and the goals of a right wing government and great leader and such,they all seem to have a big problem with being told what to do. especially the grass roots supporters who are now energetically resisting government intervention into “public health” with safety recommendations and simple protocols and vaccines
as was noted there is no Augustus among them just a bunch of ignorant arrogant opportunists and a’holes
drew@23–
Stop parroting demonstrably false RT propaganda. After Yanukovych fled Ukraine, there was a provisional government for all of 4 months, after which an election was held. In that election, Svoboda won 1% of the Presidential vote and 6 out of 225 parliamentary seats. Not a single Svoboda politician was appointed to any cabinet position in the elected government. And since then the strength of the neonazi/ultranationalist wing of Ukrainian politics has almost entirely withered away. In the last election in 2019, those ultra-right parties banded together to pool their votes and got a whole 2.2% and zero seats in Parliament. If Obama was trying to establish a neonazi regime, then it was a flaming failure.
The idea that the Orange Revolution is just an American neonazi installation act is pure Russian disinformation. That link you posted starts off with one of the most egregious misquotes you could ever come up with. ‘Confirmed by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, key organizations in the Ukraine including the Neo-Nazi party Svoboda were generously supported by Washington: “We have invested more than 5 billion dollars to help Ukraine to achieve these and other goals. … We will continue to promote Ukraine to the future it deserves.”’
That speech was made in December 2013, months before the protests became riots, and refers to money given directly to the Ukraine government — which was, as I’m sure you’ll agree, under the pro-Russian Yanukovych for much of that time — and not directly to specific political groups like Svoboda. And notice that ellipsis? Here is the full paragraph:
“Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, the United States has supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations. We have invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.”
Even for people rightly cynical about America’s meddling in international politics, that’s creationist-level quote mining.
Note also the bizarre claim in your link that “Svoboda Neo-Nazi leader Oleh Tyahnybok was not granted a major cabinet post (apparently at the request of assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland).” The US Secretary of State blocking the Svoboda leader from a cabinet post is evidence that the US Secretary of State was installing Svoboda in positions of power???
Finally, while pretty much everyone agrees that Yanukovych won the 2010 election in a fair election, by the time of the riots he had unilaterally reversed his position on European integration and refused to sign crucial agreements that he had promised when negotiating to form government with other parties. When protestors came out against him, he used Russian advisers and paramilitary forces to suppress the protests, including ordering snipers to fire into the crowds. So, yes, he was fairly elected, but by the time of the protests he had become a political criminal and Russian-sponsored traitor and it was the people of Ukraine who tossed him out. True, some of those Ukrainians were neonazis, just like in every other Western country, but this is limp effort to paint the Orange Revolution, a movement that covered the entire spectrum of Ukrainian politics, as a nazi front.
I don’t have any special insight into Ukraine, even though I live much closer to it than you guys, but how uncritically some of you spew russina propaganda is terryfying.
Recently one of russian ministers dared to claim that countries of central Europe were “orphaned” by dissolution of USSR and Warsaw Pact. How far it is from reality may be shown by ex-foreign affair minister who responded – you were not the parent by serial rapist and if you try to come back we will kick you in the nuts.
And I fully agree.
Central Europe is probably most staunched supporters of US in Europe and the ones that spend most on military in NATO (outside US), went to all the missions US asked them to and if it will come to war, they will go to war.
Us guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for giving away nuclear arsenal.
US leaving Ukraine on ice right now would mean that US is not trustworthy and that only way to be safe is to get your hands on nuclear weapons and this is not the world you want to live in.
Also Russian propaganda is stupid with comparisons like “what if someone tried to join Mexico to anti US military allaince” – no one would ask, because Mexico has no reason to join such alliance because cooperation with US is good for Mexico economy and there is no reason to expect Mexico will be invaded.
Maybe if Russia tried to economically support their neighbors without threatening to invade them, her neighbors wouldn’t be so quick to try to join NATO?
US promised to Ukraine to guard their territorial integrity in exchange for giving away Ukraine’s nukes, if US will leave Ukraine alone it means only that
Gorzki@28–
I don’t always agree with you, but here I agree completely.
The FOX/GOP hive knows that wars are good for incumbent presidents. Republican president = push for war. Democrat president = heel-digging isolationism.
Gorzki,
Too late. Much too late.
That is what makes markgisleson@16 & friends so easy to manipulate. They’d vote for the devil himself over Democrats, even as the Devil/Voldemort robs them blind. They’ll snort Covid and die an awful death just to spite a lib. That’s why evil finds them so easy to manipulate.
@14
Or flat out contradict your own prior stance – remember, they plan to “get a Republican into the presidency, then impeach Biden.”, this a) gets rid of the messy situation of another Dem taking over when he is gone, and b) is LITERALLY what they insisted you couldn’t do to Trump, since he was no longer in office to be impeached.
Oh, and to pile on to you markgisleson – why do Democrats “disgust them”? Answer: A completely successful campaign by Republicans, and right wing media, to claim that Democrats are are liars, all doing even worse things than the Republicans themselves, and that those same Republicans are, instead of being worse, actually paragons of virtue, who will bring back Jesus, and save the country from corruption. Its the wolves telling the sheep that they should be afraid of crows, because at least the wolves only eat you alive, they don’t steal your shiny objects and peck people’s eyes out. Its f-ing easy to convince what have basically become, thanks to a very successful adoption of church tactics, a cult, to think everyone else is scarier, and use misinformation and lies about everyone else’s ideas, as well as isolation from all good ideas, to scare the hell out of “followers”.
@16: Looks like the fake-left are out with the both-sides-ism early this year. I wonder if markgisleson is getting as much money from rich Republicans as Ralph W. “Lenin Lite” Nader and Jill Stein got.
@ 16
And just what, pray tell, disgusted them? Civil rights and letting the n*****s and sp**ks walk around in white neighborhoods un-lynched? Legal abortion? LGBTQ rights? What marginalized group do the Democrats have to throw under the bus to regain the vote of rural, Bible-humping, mouth-breathing, WT who took up dirt-farming because
high schoolmiddle schoolkindergarten was hard?@ 17
Seems that way. Saaaaay… didn’t this same class reductionist asshole come through here a few months back talking shit about The 1619 Project and CRT? His story about being an Iowa Dem sounds familiar.
I am personally disgusted by Democrats’ overall fecklessness and disturbing tendency to issue calls for “civility” at times that demand a clear stand and bold action.
Yet, I personally keep voting for them–you may question my judgment–and have never once considered voting for a Republican, an act tantamount to saying “These sugar pills don’t work. I need something stronger like cyanide.”
So to echo Akira MacKenzie@35, whatever it is that disgusts people who vote Republican, it isn’t the same things that disgust me.