Nice article, bad headline. We were never conned, at least millions of us weren’t.
And Democrats were complicit the whole time, ignoring the explicit warning signs in their blind greed for more corporate money.
I’d agree, except that the democrats whole platform for the last 10 years has been “yeah, but look at the other guys, he’s crazy”.
They need the other guy to be crazy to be elected. Getting rid of that hurts them. So they keep him around.
There is a famous saying: “the buck stops here”.
It means that when someone is in charge, they assume responsibility for whatever happens under their command, rather than whinging about it being not their fault.
Trump seems to have never heard of this quote. However, that is irrelevant now bc as a former President, what are we expecting of him? Rather, we have expectations for the current one, which are either being met or they are… not.
Your graphic does not explain why it is not the job of a leader to do things to protect the democracy of this nation?
Oh well, soon enough there may not be political parties anymore and we won’t have to worry about any of this.
Do you not understand how the US government is structured? The president isn’t a king and his party doesn’t have unlimited power and authority.
The president isn’t a king and his party doesn’t have unlimited power and authority.
Well that was true a week ago…
Now if the President is effectively a King so long as he’s willing to commit crimes to get his way.
Oh well, it’s not like someone that’s a criminal could become President… right? RIGHT?!?
Oh wow, you are going to be surprised to hear what happened on Monday…
Here’s a quote from the same man:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Hey, first, my apologies. I read your graphic as being in response to the OP, maybe I had my screen zoomed in a little but while my point still stands I think, it has more than a little bit different emphasis to it in that case.
Anyway, I wholeheartedly agree that the leader needs to LEAD. Which is why, regardless of partisan politicking, if Biden or his advisors assess that he is too weak to do the job anymore, for whatever reason (sickness, maybe he was poisoned even, I’m not trying to start a conspiracy here just saying that regardless of anything that would be his “fault”), then part of the job is that he step down in such a case?
Risking things is good and all, when done properly. But stepping down in such a case would not be “timidity”, so much as being genuinely honest with oneself about the realities of the particular situation under consideration. i.e. these aren’t merely butterflies in one’s stomach i.e. performance anxiety that needs to be overcome - this is real, actual risk assessment of pros vs. cons for each of the paths forward, and strategically picking the one that offers the highest likelihood of success.
Steadfastness is a virtue, but stubbornness is a weakness. Hold fast to what is true, not refuse to budge merely bc you have no capacity to do otherwise.
That’s okay, I understand. I don’t disagree with anything you’ve written here. I’m torn on him stepping down myself, so I get it. My response is really just aimed at the commentor above who is complaining about the Democrats for supreme court case results. It’s a Republican court, it’s nonsense. These are separate branches for a reason and they don’t share command structures, so even “the buck stops here” doesn’t apply. In a way, blaming the president for this is pushing the exact sort of ideology the Republicans want right now of a king, not a president. This supreme court was put in place by a man who was voted in by a very tiny majority in a few states. Biden didn’t fail in this case. We, the voters, failed. America, the people, failed.
Trump barely appointed those judges even, so much as Mitch McConnell held up their appointments so that the next, Republican, president could fill them.
At a guess, they seem to have been saying something like how the President should have pushed harder. Like if not on this exact issue, then on ending the special rules for filibustering, so as to be able to break through that Republican wall of obstructionism while the Dems had some amount of power. i.e. they are both bad, if not quite equally so, but the grown-ups i.e. tribal same-side are held to a higher level of responsibility than the children i.e. tribal other people-group bad. Which isn’t quite the same as saying that Dems are always wrong, just that they share in their level of responsibility too, for not fixing things.
And tbf this SCOTUS ruling on Monday seems to have been a game-changer. The excuse “but we can’t do anything about it” rings more hollow now, even if it was previously true.
Though it all seems a moot point anyway. At this point it looks like there’s an extremely good chance of Trump winning, or if by some freak occurrence not then as long as that ruling remains we’ll simply punt forward the end of democracy for another 4 years - which is itself a lie b/c from now on, democracy is already over, and instead of a President we now have elected emperors/god-kings. Man this is depressing:-(.
who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
It’s hard to “dare greatly” when you need the votes from the downtrodden and also need campaign cash from the billionaires. In other words the Dems need something from the exploiters and from the exploited.
If the Dems please their voters, they will upset the superrich and the wannabe superrich (the temporarily embarrassed millionaires), who are their biggest and most reliable donors. The superrich give and they expect something in return. Those corporate revolving doors will not revolve themselves. Upset your money base and you can’t buy commercials or get “free” TV coverage on the billionaire-owned media.
So, upsetting the voting base is better for the Dems than upsetting the billionaires. If you disappoint your voters by falling short you can always say “the GOP stopped us, it’s not our fault, vote harder next time. Oh, and the GOP is even worse than us Dems, so where are you going to go, little ones?”
That’s the Dem strategy ever since the third way takeover.
That’s why the Dems are trash. The Dems will absolutely get a reckoning sooner or later.
The Dems cannot fail us, it is only us who can fail the Dems.
The Dems are the cold and timid souls. That’s why the Dems always voter shame and never say “I failed.”
Yea that first column is complete strawman
I’ve seen plenty of the usual suspects complaining that the IRA didn’t do enough despite it being the largest green energy bill ever passed.
Whatever. We’re still allowed to critique the Democrats without it resorting to ‘fuck the democrats’. Not everything is their fault but it’s just ignorant to think that they couldn’t have done more in the face of rising fascism.
I fail to see how this helps your point?
What good have Democrats done? I don’t mean throwing some crumbs out to a small subsection of student loan holders, or passing small goods such as credit card fee guidelines.
I mean reversing the trend this country has been on since Reagan. Why do Citizens United and Glass Steagall still exist? Prison and prosecutorial reform? Making companies actually pay taxes? Democrats have held plenty of majorities. What’s the excuse?
Why do Dems let the fascists walk all over them and never lift a single finger in retaliation? Why is it always Dems compromising and sinking their bills to please Republicans?
Are you genuinely saying that throwing literal breadcrumbs out is an acceptable trade to all that shit?
And then you wonder why you get called collaborators?
The fact that after all this discourse, you liberals are still spamming this tired debunked shit instead of coming up with any actual critique is, as usual, yet another self report of your complicity to fascism.
Glass-Steagall was repealed by Bill Clinton. Which is the problem since it was regulations on banks which may have prevented the 2008 financial crisis had it been strengthened rather than repealed.
The reason why a new version of Glass-Steagall can’t be passed is because the GOP can fillibuster it in the Senate. And right now the GOP holds a slim majority in the House so it wouldn’t even be brought up for a vote, let alone get enough GOP votes to pass.
Same goes for Citizens United, and that one probably would need a majority in the Supreme Court as well. Maybe even a constitutional ammmendment. To get a majority in the Supreme Court they need to hold the Whitehouse and a majority of the Senate for long enough that the GOP Justices retire. To make a constitutional amendment they’d need to hold the Whitehouse, Congress, and a majority of the State Legislatures.
The fact that the GOP is leading the US towards fascism and you still can’t get off your high horse to vote against them makes you complicit in their fascism.
My right to marry my partner was won by democrats. Anyone calling that a breadcrumb can go fuck themselves right into the sun. The party does a hell of a lot more than the left wants to give them credit for. Not even arguing the pic above is not lacking nuance or that democrats are perfect, but they’ve won me a hell of a lot more than you leftist armchair politicians who have never given me a single thing but promises you never fulfill.
Because the Democrats have not had an actual majority since 2010. The closest they got was 2020-2022, but two senators ended up being traitors who were bought out.
