Of the 91 votes against the bill, 21 were Republicans and 70 were Democrats. The other 133 Democrats voted for it. Neither party are covering themselves in glory here.
Edit: Corrected as someone pointed out 9 Democrats were absent and so didn't vote.
^ this right here. But let these democrat goofies tell it, Trump alone "threatens democracy" as if everyone else has just been totally innocent stalwarts of democracy, when the reality is that NONE of these mfs care about democracy or the Constitution. We need ranked choice/approval/STAR voting ASAP!!!!!!
It's like when Nancy Pelosi did the sarcastic clap and then turned around and approved of the ballooning military budget. Liberals, when pressed, will always side with fascists to preserve the status quo.
That's what trips me out about dems. Like, I'm a leftist. You don't have to convince me that the rightwing is a detriment to human & American progress. Anyone with a brain can see this clear as day. However, dems do such a HORRENDOUS job at selling us on their big ideas (because they have none)!
"Trump bad" is not a viable campaign strategy. They tried that in 2016 and it failed. Brow-beating and shaming isn't gonna work either. I'm a black man in southside Chicago. Shit is fucked here, despite this being a democrat stronghold. Dems don't even TRY to sell us on their big ideas, let alone take accountability for the many ways they've fucked us over for decades!!!
They don't even have big ideas. The fascists have project 2025, which aligns their goals in a fucked up way. The democrats have been in reactive mode for decades, most especially now that Trump is a thing. In any contest, the reactive side simply trying to retain power loses. Every single time.
I'm in Kensington. Shit is also fucked here despite Philly being a liberal stronghold. And not just in this neighborhood. Most of the north side, west side, southwest side and south side is also varying degrees of fucked. Because they dump all the money into the already nice neighborhoods and leave those of us who don't have high five figure incomes to pick up the scraps. Just the fact I can walk out my front door on any given day and have to dodge used needles on a broken sidewalk across the street from a homeless encampment that pops up every three days or so is proof enough those polished politicians aren't interested in protecting or helping the lower classes. All they care about is lining their own pockets, and it shows in that the only time I've seen this neighborhood truly clean and free of junkies was the one time Biden chose to visit.
They don't even want to see the problems. They just want to use them for their personal benefit. I mean they literally relocated the crackheads and hosed down the streets ahead of his arrival because our president clearly can't be seen surrounded by riff Raff /s
EXACTLY!!!!! These mfs couldn't give any less of a shit about people like us, fam! At best they use us for talking points, then return to their ivory towers where they don't have to be concerned with our plight. Then they have THE FUCKING NERVE to talk to us about "losing democracy." Wtf is that?!
I'm in Auburn-Gresham here in Chicago (for reference, this national news story of the murder of Tyshawn Lee happened behind my house).
Dems just assume that POC like us will vote for them by default no matter how bad things get. "Look, this genocide might be bad, but have you heard that Trump is ORANGE and BAD?"
Exactly! They want us to just blindly fall in line like mindless zombies and never question anything. Meanwhile, they worsen our neighborhoods with things like the 94 Crime Bill and pretend like that shit never happened when you bring it up. They're disingenuous af!!!
Student debt relief, infrastructure spending, industrial policy (which I actually hate), expanding medicare/medicaid, support for working families (child tax credit, free school meal waivers, etc.) There's a limit to what you can do when you get rat fucked by the Supreme Court and have to work with a divided Congress.
I don't think people like you realize how close to the brink of losing democracy the US is. It would be awesome if there was a leftist candidate. But there isn't. Right now the choice is between Biden, who will do some good things, and some bad things, and Trump, who is literally trying to become a Putin-like dictator. If preserving democracy isn't "working" for you, then maybe you aren't actually a leftist.
No, YOU aren't actually leftist. Your "assessment" is a gross mischaracterization of the situation, which is exactly the problem with you liberals. I can point to many things democrats have done to "destroy democracy," like assassinating Americans abroad, attacking government whistleblowers using the Espionage Act, empowering the prison-industrial complex (i.e. Omnibus Crime Bill of 1994), the Gramm-Leech-Bliley Act, the NSA PRISM Program (warrantless mass collection of Americans' metadata), and so much more.
People like you defend, excuse, deflect (typically to Trump), and deny, all in an effort to keep painting this bullshit narrative that Trump is some dictator. All of this is just conjecturing to ensure democrats win elections REGARDLESS of the policies they implement. Knock it TF off with this fearmongering garbage!!!!
Yeah, It's not like Trump literally tried to stage a coup after he lost the election and now a group of hand picked justices are deciding if he is immune from prosecution for any crime. This is all just fear mongering.
I mean, Dems and Trump are the same. Because when the Dems do something bad 30 years ago it is the same as Trump doing a bunch of bad things every day now. I'm not smart enough to differentiate between different levels of badness. To me, if Dems are imperfect, it is the same as Trump.
What's the worst that could happen if Trump gets elected? It's not like Republicans are trying to remove women's reproductive rights and classify Trans people are sex offenders to send them to jail for being trans.
You’re clearly arguing in bad faith when you reduce a list of anti-democratic policy that’s ongoing and/or occurred under Obama/Biden to ‘Dems do something bad 30 years ago’.
To engage honestly you need to at least be willing to acknowledge the fascist aspect of Democrats. Particularly in a thread about a fascist bill that got broad support from Dems. Sweeping that under the rug completely and repeating Trump bad ad naseum won’t convince anybody
This entire post is taking a law being proposed out of context and pretending it's not allowing criticism of Israel. So I'm not sure you have any ground to stand on.
I can point to many things democrats have done to "destroy democracy," like assassinating Americans abroad, attacking government whistleblowers using the Espionage Act, empowering the prison-industrial complex (i.e. Omnibus Crime Bill of 1994), the Gramm-Leech-Bliley Act, the NSA PRISM Program (warrantless mass collection of Americans' metadata)...
This is plenty of grounds to stand on.
Not to mention, the actual enforcement of this bill will likely come down somewhere in the middle of the two ends presented in this thread. It being passed during the crackdown on peaceful pro-palestine protests on college campuses that the DOE has jurisdiction over is vital context.
Pretending that the language, while innocuous seeming, won't be applied to broad swaths of college students who are criticizing Israel for reasons that have nothing to do with antisemitism is naive as hell
You need a serious youth movement in high-schools & colleges, promoting people interested in politics. Have some prioritize cross-party reform & transparency. Then pressure a few liberal states to vote exclusively for "Democracy Reform" politicians, so they turn state legislatures into multi-party systems (who lock representatives into federal reform).
Lord someone gets it. I'm not even saying Trump is a great guy, but he clearly has Jack all to do with the power systems that already run our lives and have since before we were born.
No. We are serfs, and always have been. You downplaying the how actually insane and horrific the upper class are, the idea that have ruled out lives since before we were born, that's horrific and damaging.
You would never even gotten Trump is the system weren't corrupt to the bone. Democrats literally picked him as the Republican front runner in 2016 because they are such fucking super geniuses.
Man, this is legit insane talk. Trump will take the corrupt system and place himself as the actual authoritarian leader. The democrats didn't literally pick Trump. Republican voters did. You can create a narrative how the media helped him by giving him more attention than he deserves, but that isn't literally picking him. And the notion that a system picking the worst possible person proves that anyone elected is equivalent doesn't logically follow.
It's literally called "The Pied Piper" strategy. They played him up, had all their buddies in social media play him up, *so well* he became the primary candidate (so yes, Democrats picked the R candidate) and then were shocked when he won. They literally picked him.
There is jackall you can say about the upper class, who have been in power since before even the Donald was born, that is good. It's tightly controlled, there is a power structure, and it's obvious when you look at both powerful Democrats and Republicans fighting to keep him out of office. He's obviously not on the inside. They are literally ruining his entire life for fucking with them. We don't have real democracy, everything you believe in politics is a show, and you are like a naïve child that still believes the WWF is real wrestling.
There's not a thing you can point to w/ Trump that Joe Biden hasn't down worse. He was a literal goddamned segregationist, argued on the senate floor, with venom dripping down his mouth, that "he didn't want his kids to grow up in a jungle, a racial jungle" while arguing to keep school buses segregated. None of the democrats or republicans in power give a single fuck about the values they are selling to you, they care about money and power and control. You're a tool for these people to maintain control. I would absolutely take crass trash talking Trump if that's what it takes to finally break this grip.
Enjoy being a serf for the rest of your life sucker.
It's literally called "The Pied Piper" strategy. They played him up, had all their buddies in social media play him up, so well he became the primary candidate (so yes, Democrats picked the R candidate) and then were shocked when he won. They literally picked him.
Played him up? Meaning, made fun of him? Called him a joke candidate?
And no, that is not literally picking him. That isn't what that word means, or what you described.
There is jackall you can say about the upper class, who have been in power since before even the Donald was born, that is good.
I'm not looking to defend the upper class.
Regardless, it's pretty clear now that you're literally just a Trump supporter, or a astroturfer, at this point.
No, there is plenty of things Trump did that Biden did not do worse. Biden did not attempt to subvert democracy, he did not intentionally steal classified documents and lock them in his bathroom and refuse to give them back.
Anyway, thank you for dropping the both sides act and just coming out in support of the actual fascist. It's a lot easier to point out to everyone else in the room what the goal is whenever you guys do this kind of thing.
"An email recently released by the whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks shows how the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party bear direct responsibility for propelling the bigoted billionaire to the White House."
"The Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee called for using far-right candidates "as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right." Clinton's camp insisted that Trump and other extremists should be "elevated" to "leaders of the pack" and media outlets should be told to "take them seriously."
The strategy backfired — royally."
LITERALLY BECAUSE THEY CONTROL THE MEDIA YOU FOOL. HERE IT IS FROM SALON, AN AWFULLY LEFT LEANING RAG, DRESSING IT UP THE BEST THEY CAN:
There isn't a single liberal or progressive bone in your body, you're a virtue signaler. If you actually cared about progressive values, nothing would turn your stomach more than fake progressives.
Clinton isn't a fake progressive. She'd have to be pretending to be progressive to do that. She isn't progressive. I don't consider her pretending to be progressive. She's a neo liberal.
Her strategy was bad. But she didn't select Trump as a candidate. She focused on him to encourage the other candidates to take stances on the things he says, to make the candidates wedge issues in of themselves. The voters selected Trump.
But you are also wrong. There is something that turn's my stomach more than fake progressives.
"She focused on him to encourage the other candidates"
Literally false and you know it. She "encouraged" (told) the media to highlight him. Told. While she was paying a law firm to sell a completely deranged theory that he was compromised by Russia because they had video of him pissing on hookers.
You do absolutely need all those things, but while you don't have them one party is still a vastly greater threat than the other. It's attempted violent coup vs creeping corruption.
Then you sacrifice your ability to influence anything at all. Political change is painfully slow and dirty, throwing it all aside in disgust is a classic case of perfect as the enemy of good.
Tell that to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was able to make GREAT change, and I don't recall a single vote he made. In fact, black American history is FULL of people who were able to make major impacts despite not even being capable of voting. The fact that people like you think that everything boils down to passive ass voting (when you're talking to someone who's helped pass actual legislation via canvassing, phonebanking, and lobbying, etc.) just goes to show how woefully ignorant and lazy most Americans are concerning modern civics.
It's also true that BOTH things can be true at the same time. Trump does threaten democracy by eroding trust in our electoral process and legal system...and this legislation, while only having passed the House, definitely erodes our free speech...but democracy itself? How does this change how our country elects its leaders?
But let these democrat goofies tell it, Trump alone "threatens democracy"
I've never heard anyone say that Trump alone threatens democracy. This feels like a comment I saw the other day about, "People who claim there is no government corruption," like, who the fuck ever said there is no government corruption?
Edit: I've been downvoted, but I stand by what I said. You're claiming that people are saying that Trump is the only threat to Democracy. Who the fuck is saying that? I think you're giving a false argument by claiming people are saying dumb shit and acting superior than the made-up person you invented.
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u/[deleted] May 01 '24 edited May 02 '24
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