I wonder who’ll be next week’s Prime Minister?
Politics and Current Affairs
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I mean, if that’s what this season of America is going to be, alright. Let’s get the popcorn out.
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Matt Gaetz is a crazy appointment and there’s a chance it won’t get through the Senate apparently. We’ll see.
Or indeed, even get to the Senate stage.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/21/matt-gaetz-attorney-general-nomination
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I’m very skeptical that Trump won’t pick someone worse.
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Well, yes. But it’s interesting that there’s enough power left in the non-Trump GOP that they can touch any of Trump’s choices at all. Up to this point, I’d have thought he could’ve nominated an ape in a suit and they’d swallow it.
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They’d never nominate an ape in a suit, the sexual violence the ape would commit wouldn’t be vindictive or targeted.
Then again, it would excel in flinging shit at people with no remorse.
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Former Florida attorney general? She seems wildly overqualified for a Trump pick. We can only hope she makes up for it by being a truly horrible human being.
In 2018, Bondi joined with 19 other Republican-led states in a lawsuit to overturn the ACA’s bans on health insurance companies charging people with pre-existing conditions higher premiums or denying them coverage outright.[16]
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Bondi opposed same-sex marriage and other LGBTQ rights issues on behalf of the state.[17]
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In August 2018, while still serving as Florida Attorney General, Bondi co-hosted The Five on Fox News three days in a row while also appearing on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show.[20] Fox News claimed that the Florida Commission on Ethics had approved Bondi’s appearance on the program; however, the spokeswoman for the commission denied that, telling the Tampa Bay Times that no decision was made by the commission and that the commission’s general counsel did not make a determination whether or not Bondi’s appearance as a host violated the Florida Code of Ethics. The Tampa Bay Times described it as “unprecedented” for a sitting elected official to host a TV show.[20]
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In 2011, Bondi also pressured two attorneys to resign who were investigating Lender Processing Services, a financial services company now known as Black Knight, following the robosigning scandal, as part of their work for Florida’s Economic Crime Division. After the resignations, Bondi received campaign contributions from Lender Processing Services, though she denied any quid pro quo.[24]
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In 2013, Bondi also received criticism following a campaign donation from Donald Trump.[28] Prior to the donation, Bondi had received at least 22 fraud complaints regarding Trump University. A spokesperson for Bondi announced that her office was considering joining a lawsuit initiated by Eric Schneiderman, the Attorney General of New York, regarding tax fraud potential charges against Trump.[29][30] Four days later, a political action committee established by Bondi to support her re-election, And Justice for All, received a $25,000 donation from the Donald J. Trump Foundation. Bondi subsequently declined to join the lawsuit against Trump University. Both Bondi and Trump defended the propriety of the donation.[31][32]
Right, thumps up on that front, it seems. For a second there I was worried he’d nominated someone for Attorney General who wasn’t a criminal, but we’re good here.
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Rule of law in the USA
1776-2024
Cause of death – Idiocy
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/22/trump-hush-money-case-sentencing
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Cause of death – Idiocy
Seems like there’s a lot of that going around.
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The newest member of Trump’s confederacy of dunces:
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Interesting graph comparing the US with some other countries:
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Heard Netanyahu used to call his mum anti-semitic when she told him to tidy up.
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Is it wrong to hope Trump dies before January 20?
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Is it wrong to hope Trump dies before January 20?
Honestly, this is infuriatingly pathetic. “oh we have to delay these court cases because the defendant – who tried to overthrow the result of a legitimate election – is running for president and we don’t want to influence the election” becomes “well the guy who tried to fix an election won another election, guess we can’t prosecute him now!”. Just so fucking dumb.
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Musk accuses Trump whistleblower Vindman of ‘treason,’ says ‘he will pay’
Considering the company Musk keeps…
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Interesting that he’s the one to say this. I mean most people probably knew, but it’s impossible to say it.
I wonder why you would think that. All over Europe, parties are trying to capitalise on strong anti-immigration stances; there’s pretty much nobody who isn’t suggesting tougher and tougher anti-immigration policies, trying to top each other, including the supposedly political left.
Anyway: It all seems like a bunch of nonsense because it’s being connected to the cost of the asylum system while the aspect that Labour actually is taking aim at is businesses importing cheap labour (which the Tories apparently made very easy for them indeed) and keeping salaries low in that way.
In a week in which the Labour government clashed with business leaders over the national insurance increase, which has been dubbed a “jobs tax”, and the difficulties of getting people on benefits back into work, Sir Keir sent them a strong warning that he would not allow companies to continue to rely on cheap foreign labour.
He told reporters: “For too long we’ve had this over-reliance on the easy answer of recruiting from abroad, and that’s got to change. And it’s a two-way street.
Which, you know, fair enough, it’s pretty crazy how much UK immigration rose after Brexit. On the other hand, it’s mostly bullshit:
ONS estimates show two main explanations for the 660,000 increase in non-EU immigration that took place between 2019 and 2023 (Figure 3):
Work visas. Almost half of the increase in non-EU immigration from 2019 to 2023 resulted from those arriving for work purposes (21%) and their dependants (27%). Health and care was the main industry driving the growth, including care workers who received access to the immigration system in February 2022. There was also higher demand for some workers who were already eligible for visas under the old system, such as doctors and nurses. Early data for 2024 suggest that health and care work visas had fallen substantially, however.
International students and their dependants accounted for a further 39% of the increase in non-EU immigration. The UK has an explicit strategy of increasing and diversifying foreign student recruitment, and it is also likely that the reintroduction of post-study work rights post-Brexit made the UK more attractive to international students. The 2023 figures do not yet reflect the impact of restrictions on students’ family members, introduced in January 2024.So a big part of the immigrants are in health labour, and if the UK is anything at all like Germany, they probably need nurses and healthcare workers desperately, and the other part of it are highly qualified workers who are also desperately needed by all European countries at the moment.
So yeah, apart from a legitimate point about social dumping somewhere in there, this is also the usual populism suggesting that Jonny Foreigner is leeching off the Great British society while it’s actually the people coming in keeping it all going while the native population is growing too old to do so anymore. But everybody else is doing it, so why shouldn’t Labour.
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So we had a general election on Friday. and about two thirds of the seats have been filled. Not a huge surprise, the three biggest parties – neoliberal Fine Gael and Fianna Fail and nominally Democratic Socialist Sinn Fein have gained most of the seats so far, but none of them have even fielded enough candidates to form a government by themselves. The Green Party are the big losers, they’ve secured one seat so far and have lost a lot seats they were defending from the last election, but it’s more a case of their seats going to other centre-left parties, Labour are up two seats from where they were in 2020 and the Social Democrats up one already. For the far left it’s much of a muchness, Solidarity-People Before Profit have lost one seat. The only real gain for the right is Aontú, a fically left but socially conservative party which split from Sinn Fein over supporting abortion have gone from one seat to two so far. Thankfully the far right have been largely destroyed, with the vast majority of their candidates eliminated on the first count. Independent Ireland, a new party centred around a trio of established independent TDs held onto their founders’ seats, as did a number of well-establised Independent rabble rousers like the Healy-Rae family.
Given Fine Gael and Fianna Fail’s flat refusal to work with Sinn Fein, it’ll presumably be the two of them forming the next government, probably with either Labour or the Social Democrats joining them depending on final numbers, with whichever of those two parties conveniently forgetting that they’ll end up surrendering too many of their principles and get demolished at the next election.
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So, President Biden is pardoning his son despite having sworn to the contrary. Already, Trump is calling it a miscarriage of justice, as if he isn’t planning to pardon insurrectionists.
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You might almost think that letting the president pardon criminals when he feels like it was a fucking stupid idea!
In fairness, who could imagine such a mechanism ever being abused.
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Hey, remember when Gerald Ford, whom Richard Nixon appointed as his new Vice President after VP Spiro Agnew was forced to resign due to a scandal, suddenly became president when Nixon resigned due to a different scandal, and then pardoned Nixon as one of his first official acts as president?!
Yeah, good times…
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To be honest, I don’t think Biden pardoning Hunter is that big a problem. As he said, the plea deal Hunter agreed to was torpedoed and it’s very clear that Trump and his cronies see Hunter as a big target. There’s no way they wouldn’t have gone for retaliatory “justice” against him. I’d have pardoned him to avoid that too.
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To be honest, I don’t think Biden pardoning Hunter is that big a problem.
There’s a number of problems with it really, but the most important one is: Biden demonstrated that he’s fine with some people – those in power – breaking the law and suffering no consequences whatsoever. In that, he is now no different than Trump. Which plays into the hands of those who already see the two big parties as interchangable and want someone like Trump to shake things up. And it also means that once again, people have been shown that “politicians are all the same” and they needn’t bother going out to vote at all.
As he said, the plea deal Hunter agreed to was torpedoed
Ah well, when a plea deal doesn’t work out obviously all you can do is just not prosecute somebody further. I bet there’s a lot of convicted people in the US who wish they’d had that choice.
I’d have pardoned him to avoid that too.
Right, because you’re fine with somebody stealing 1.4 million dollars from the people.
Well, like Tobias said, this is why separation of powers is a really good idea.
Interesting sidenote: The pardon doesn’t just cover the crimes he’s being accused of, but any and all he may have comitted in the year 2014. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it.
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To be honest, I don’t think Biden pardoning Hunter is that big a problem.
it’s a bad graphic for the Democratic Party, which wants to be seen as more ethical and supportive of “law” than their Republican counterparts. Frankly, the Dems need to wake the fuck up and start figuring out their priorities. And the Republicans who start pointing their fingers should look no further than Trump’s appointment of the new ambassador to France
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To be honest, I don’t think Biden pardoning Hunter is that big a problem.
There’s a number of problems with it really, but the most important one is: Biden demonstrated that he’s fine with some people – those in power – breaking the law and suffering no consequences whatsoever. In that, he is now no different than Trump. Which plays into the hands of those who already see the two big parties as interchangable and want someone like Trump to shake things up. And it also means that once again, people have been shown that “politicians are all the same” and they needn’t bother going out to vote at all.
As he said, the plea deal Hunter agreed to was torpedoed
Ah well, when a plea deal doesn’t work out obviously all you can do is just not prosecute somebody further. I bet there’s a lot of convicted people in the US who wish they’d had that choice.
I’d have pardoned him to avoid that too.
Right, because you’re fine with somebody stealing 1.4 million dollars from the people.
Well, like Tobias said, this is why separation of powers is a really good idea.
Interesting sidenote: The pardon doesn’t just cover the crimes he’s being accused of, but any and all he may have comitted in the year 2014. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it.
I’m not saying it’s ideal by any means, but he had plea deal that a Trump appointed judge struck down. Given that they’ve spent over four years demonising Hunter Biden (and I have no strong opinion either way) I really wouldn’t put it past Trump, who is openly talking about persecuting his enemies with the full power of the federal government, to try and fuck him up even further on other charges, tenuous or otherwise. So yeah, lame duck President Biden at the absolutely end of his political career (and twilight years of his life, let’s be honest) pre-emptively protecting his fuck up of a son from the vindictiveness of the next President’s administration really doesn’t bother me that much. I just wish he’d been as keen to play in the margins of traditional acceptability on other stuff (stacking the supreme court for example) as the other side are. Because there’s only so far holding yourself to a higher standard gets you when you’re up against people like Trump.
I genuinely don’t believe this is going to change anyone’s pre-existing opinions about anyone, frankly. Who possibly has a problem with this but was ok with Trump pardoning all his mates? The people of a mind to think “both parties are as bad as each other” already didn’t particularly like Biden, who is now an irrelevancy anyway. I just think there are more pressing things to care about than a guy who was unlikely to go to jail anyway being pardoned.
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Not a great Korea move.
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South Korea just declared martial law. Fucking hell.
And the SK parliament undid it.
South Korea martial law latest: Parliament votes to block declaration after clashes with police
Wild.
Must have been crazy things happening behind the scene.
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A South Korean legislator said the president declared martial law because he was lonely.
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And then the US takes back its numero uno spot by having a huge healthcare insurance company CEO shot to death in New York.
All the eulogies say he was a good man etc. But the company he led had been in the news due to denying coverage. It’s not personal, it’s just business? Healthcare is as personal as it gets.
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And then the US takes back its numero uno spot by having a huge healthcare insurance company CEO shot to death in New York.
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Well, if this summary is accurate:
Starmer is prioritising macho bollocks above all else, as there’s nothing like giving the people he wants to deliver his vision a public kicking to motivate them. That always works, right?
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It’s another mastermind bit of strategy from Starmer. Piss off all the people you’re going to be relying on over the next few years to achieve anything in order to… score points with the people who already hate them and won’t like Starmer as much as Badenoch/Farage no matter what he does?
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today the Romanian election got thrown out. Democracy is in danger.
Because of Russian interference. Democracy is on life support while being beaten with hammers.
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It’s another mastermind bit of strategy from Starmer. Piss off all the people you’re going to be relying on over the next few years to achieve anything in order to… score points with the people who already hate them and won’t like Starmer as much as Badenoch/Farage no matter what he does?
Did you not see how well that strategy’s been working for the Democrats in the US? Solid gold, baby.
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Did you not see how well that strategy’s been working for the Democrats in the US?
I’m just glad that all those people who withheld their vote to teach Biden and the Democrats a lesson got what they wanted.
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Did you not see how well that strategy’s been working for the Democrats in the US?
I’m just glad that all those people who withheld their vote to teach Biden and the Democrats a lesson got what they wanted.
Were the Democrats entitled to those votes, or should they have offered the voters something they wanted?
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Turns out lots of them wanted a rapist.
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Both the Democrats and Labour need to do a better job of communicating to voters who chose not to back them in the most recent elections – that’s clear.
However, voters also have a responsibility to be informed about the consequences of their voting choices.
I wonder if the people who chose not to vote Democrat to send them a message this year are happy with the outcome that resulted from their choice. I would guess not, but who knows – maybe they think four more years of Trump is a price worth paying to send their message.
Don’t forget, it’s absolutely in the interests of the rightwing parties to stoke anger from the left at what the more progressive parties are doing. In the UK, the rightwing media (which is most of it) is attacking Starmer on every possible front, and lots of their criticisms are gaining traction with the left as well as the right, which is exactly what they’ll be hoping for. If it goes on like this for five years then they will have done their job well, and I’m sure Reform and the Tories will make significant gains in 2029. So I’m not sure parroting their attack lines is all that helpful.
Should the more progressive parties be exempt from criticism when their policies are lacking in certain areas? Of course not.
But suggesting that they deserve to be punished by losing to rightwing parties with policies that are far more concerning and dangerous implies a greater appetite to attack more progressive parties for their weaknesses than to build defenses against the more rightwing parties that will make our lives much, much worse.
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I wonder if the people who chose not to vote Democrat to send them a message this year are happy with the outcome that resulted from their choice. I would guess not, but who knows – maybe they think four more years of Trump is a price worth paying to send their message.
There’s also the questions of whether that message will be received, of course. Given that immensity of Trump’s win, the Democrats may well decide they need to move further to the right.
Meanwhile, in Germany, after the dissolution of our labour/green/neo-liberal government coalition, we are going to have an election in February and then a pretty right-wing CDU (conservative party) chancellor who accused refugees of only coming to Germany to get their teeth fixed and who twenty years ago introduced the term “Leitkultur” (lead culture – the idea that there is a true German cultural core that immigrants need to adapt to) into the political discourse.
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Here’s the thing. If your red line was the US supporting a genocide, then it didn’t matter if Trump or Harris got in, it was happening anyway. If your red line was national protections for LGBT people, then it didn’t matter if Trump or Harris got in. Harris told people not to vote for her, she ignored them or she told them to shut up. people didn’t decline to vote to send a message. They did it because they had no hope that voting would make things any better.
I could write a long response here, but I’ll simply say that anyone who thinks there is no difference between a Harris and Trump presidency is 100% wrong.
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I could write a long response here, but I’ll simply say that anyone who thinks there is no difference between a Harris and Trump presidency is 100% wrong.
This! I don’t know how people didn’t vote for the Dems knowing that Trump stood for everything they hate. A two party system is a lesser or greater of two evils. That’s it. “I don’t like Harris’ LGBTQ stance”. Fine. This is your vote and you can use it any way you want. Her stance was bullshit. But now you have Trump. His is not better.
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I didn’t say that they’d be identical. But for a lot of people the things that are important to them will be the same either way. Pregnant people are going to die due to lack of reproductive healthcare in red states and Harris had no itention to fix that. Harris literally said she had no interest in fighting to protect trans people in states where they’re under threat of persecution. And the genocide of Palestinians would continue either way. Why should anyone support the Democrats if the Democrats have no interest in supporting them?
Whisper it, but sometimes I vote for things that benefit people other than me.
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I didn’t say that they’d be identical. But for a lot of people the things that are important to them will be the same either way. Pregnant people are going to die due to lack of reproductive healthcare in red states and Harris had no itention to fix that. Harris literally said she had no interest in fighting to protect trans people in states where they’re under threat of persecution. And the genocide of Palestinians would continue either way. Why should anyone support the Democrats if the Democrats have no interest in supporting them?
Whisper it, but sometimes I vote for things that benefit people other than me.
And leftists and queer people have been voting for things that don’t benefit them for a long long time and getting nothing but abuse and taken for granted for it.
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So far, both US and UK politics can be boiled down to Labour / Democrats going: We’re not as bad as the other lot.
That’s true but a great political campaign it is not. The difference is Labour got in because the other lot had run things down so badly.
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I didn’t say that they’d be identical. But for a lot of people the things that are important to them will be the same either way. Pregnant people are going to die due to lack of reproductive healthcare in red states and Harris had no itention to fix that. Harris literally said she had no interest in fighting to protect trans people in states where they’re under threat of persecution. And the genocide of Palestinians would continue either way. Why should anyone support the Democrats if the Democrats have no interest in supporting them?
Whisper it, but sometimes I vote for things that benefit people other than me.
And leftists and queer people have been voting for things that don’t benefit them for a long long time and getting nothing but abuse and taken for granted for it.
Oh, and to follow up on this, the whole point of voting for things that don’t directly benefit you is the whole idea of solidarity, that we fight for each other. And if the Democrats aren’t going to fight for LGBT people, or pregnant people, or victims of genocide, then why on earth would I assume they’ll fight for me when the time comes?
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It has been hilarious watching people who voted for Trump experience buyer’s remorse so quickly.
Businesses realizing that that potential for tariffs could increase their prices and that could seriously impact sales and the economy
Businesses that depend on illegal labor may get raided and their cheap workforce removed and deported. They may face hefty fines for hiring the illegals.
People just realizing that the Affordable Care Act and “Obamacare” are the same thing, and the Republicans are going to do every thing they can to gut it.
Fucking idiots. They were told but they didn’t listen.
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I didn’t say that they’d be identical. But for a lot of people the things that are important to them will be the same either way. Pregnant people are going to die due to lack of reproductive healthcare in red states and Harris had no itention to fix that. Harris literally said she had no interest in fighting to protect trans people in states where they’re under threat of persecution. And the genocide of Palestinians would continue either way. Why should anyone support the Democrats if the Democrats have no interest in supporting them?
Whisper it, but sometimes I vote for things that benefit people other than me.
And leftists and queer people have been voting for things that don’t benefit them for a long long time and getting nothing but abuse and taken for granted for it.
Oh, and to follow up on this, the whole point of voting for things that don’t directly benefit you is the whole idea of solidarity, that we fight for each other. And if the Democrats aren’t going to fight for LGBT people, or pregnant people, or victims of genocide, then why on earth would I assume they’ll fight for me when the time comes?
And you think Trump will?
Like I said before the election, it’s all missing the bigger picture of what the alternative outcome is. In a two-party system like this, if you weaken the Democrats then you strengthen the Republicans, and in an election where a Trump presidency was the alternative outcome I think it’s staggering that people could claim to be indifferent about which side to support.
There’s no way of spinning it, if you didn’t step up and do what you can to prevent a second Trump presidency then there’s no way you can take the moral high ground on this. I appreciate concerns over specific policy areas, but I find it unbelievable that if you genuinely cared about politics moving in a progressive direction then you’d be just as fine with Trump being president as with Harris.
And if you fucked up and didn’t appreciate that when you voted (or in this case, chose to withhold your vote in protest), then you can carry the can for the next four years.
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And nobody who refused to vote is fine with Trump being president.
If only there was something they could have done to stop it!
They’re checking out of the political system entirely because they realise neither side will help them.
You’re in the political system whether you like it or not. Politics dictates a huge amount of our day-to-day lives and the choices we make in elections determine how that will play out. The people who didn’t vote are still going to have Trump as their president.
Choosing not to vote isn’t checking out of the political system entirely, it’s voluntarily giving up a small amount of the power that you do actually have to make a difference.
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If only there was something they could have done to stop it!
Do you honestly think that voting in the Democrats would stop the rise of fascism in the US? Do you think that if Harris had gotten in she would have done anything at all about reproductive justice or protecting LGBT rights? Voting for the Democrats wouldn’t have stopped jack shit
Choosing not to vote isn’t checking out of the political system entirely, it’s voluntarily giving up a small amount of the power that you do actually have to make a difference.
You’ll see a lot of people working together in the community for mutual protection instead. Like I know a lot of queer people in the US who are literally upending their lives to escape persecution right now, and they’re getting financial and logistical support from people, a lot of whom decided not to vote. Similarly I know a lot of people in the UK who’s made escape plans for when things get worse.
The Democrat policy for decades has been to not care about left-wing votes. Chuck Schumer literally said “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia” in 2016… you know, just before Clinton lost the election while pandering to the right. Not only did fewer of the Democrat base vote for Harris, but a whopping 4% of registered Republicans voted for her, down from 5% for Biden in 2020. If your voter base rejects your arguments and policies, I don’t see how that’s the voters’ faults and not the fault of the party’s arguments and policies.
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Serious question Dave: If Harris had gotten in, what do you think she would have done about the state of abortion access in the US?
There is every reason to believe she would have done her best to reinstate a Roe-v-Wade kind of protection with legislation, as she’s said she would. Whether she would’ve been able to get that done is a different question, of course.
And nobody who refused to vote is fine with Trump being president. They’re checking out of the political system entirely because they realise neither side will help them.
Well, one side will do their best to really fuck them up though. And you can’t really check out of that. I mean, yeah, like you said, you can leave the US. But it’s not like the way the US goes doesn’t influence the rest of the world.
The Democrat policy for decades has been to not care about left-wing votes. Chuck Schumer literally said “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia” in 2016… you know, just before Clinton lost the election while pandering to the right. Not only did fewer of the Democrat base vote for Harris, but a whopping 4% of registered Republicans voted for her, down from 5% for Biden in 2020. If your voter base rejects your arguments and policies, I don’t see how that’s the voters’ faults and not the fault of the party’s arguments and policies.
Democrats do keep making that mistake, and I’m afraid they’ll once again take the wrong lesson from this election. But then again, what lesson are they supposed to take from it? When there’s a huge majority supporting Trump and his policies, including restricting access to abortion, deportations and anti-trans activism?
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The Democrats are in a similar position to Labour in 2019, weak lead candidate, hostile press, charismatic allowed to say any old shit unchecked opponent.
And the solution is likely to be the same as the UK, let the right-wing lunatics run rampant.
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Based on what? Seriously, is there any evidence that they’d even try to do anything?
Well, she announced this very clearly, and it’s not like it’d go against her record up to this point. There is no reason to believe she wouldn’t have tried to go for it. She’s tried to push for a bill like this before, after all.
As a U.S. senator, Harris opposed anti-abortion bills that would have conferred personhood rights on fetuses. None of them ultimately passed.
Conversely, Harris championed various bills that would have protected and advanced reproductive rights. In 2019, for example, Harris was a co-sponsor of the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have enacted a federal statutory right to abortion. It also did not pass.
They could try looking down-ballot where, to keep things on the topic of reproductive care, more people voted in favour of protecting abortion rights in states where it was on the ballot than they did for Harris. Polling shows time and again that policies the Democrats either downplay or ignore are popular with the people. But they won’t, say actually implement socialised helathcare because the political donor class doesn’t want it and the Democrats are fine with losing power so long as the money keeps rolling in.
I don’t think all Democrats are fine with it, but I also can’t say I entirely disagree. I think I would defend the Democratic Party to some extent here, but I don’t feel that’s necessary because the point is that while the Dems may not be what they should be, they at least don’t seek to actively punish and harm people who seek to end a pregnancy, or who are LGBT+ – and others. Voting for the lesser evil isn’t exactly inspiring, but not doing it when the actual evil is coming for you with sharpened knives is just… well, it’s not good for your own self-preservation, and none of the arguments you’ve been making has been able to see the logic of it, sorry.
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And that’s the problem hanging over all of this, vote or don’t, but you can’t opt out of the result.
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Well, she announced this very clearly, and it’s not like it’d go against her record up to this point. There is no reason to believe she wouldn’t have tried to go for it. She’s tried to push for a bill like this before, after all. As a U.S. senator, Harris opposed anti-abortion bills that would have conferred personhood rights on fetuses. None of them ultimately passed. Conversely, Harris championed various bills that would have protected and advanced reproductive rights. In 2019, for example, Harris was a co-sponsor of the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have enacted a federal statutory right to abortion. It also did not pass.
Let’s say I have no faith in her to have even attempted such a thing. Take for example Obama claiming he would “codify Roe v Wade, day 1”, and then do nothing about it, even while he had a supermajority.
Voting for the lesser evil isn’t exactly inspiring, but not doing it when the actual evil is coming for you with sharpened knives is just… well, it’s not good for your own self-preservation, and none of the arguments you’ve been making has been able to see the logic of it, sorry.
Voting for the lesser evil is still voting for evil. And like, I get that people aren’t going to see things may way, my politics are radical and I fully acknowledge that. I just have a huge problem with people blaming the voters for not voting. It assumes that the party is entitled to those votes and therefore they don’t need to do anything to earn them.
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Let’s say I have no faith in her to have even attempted such a thing.
That’s OK then, as long as we make up an imaginary alternative scenario that justifies our decision then we can hold our heads up high as we tell subsequent generations of how we valiantly chose not to do the one thing we could have done to help prevent a second Trump presidency.
If you can point to a time the Democrats did anything to protect reproductive rights on a national scale in the US, I’d be grateful.
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`The solution is not to vote for Trump. the solution is for the Democrats to run on what their voters actually want. This is a big part of why Harris lost, she tried appealing to the right, and she saw a collapse in left-wing support as a result. Then she got fewer right-wing votes than Biden did for her troubles.
And yiz are blaming the voters and not Harris for that.
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Let’s say I have no faith in her to have even attempted such a thing.
That’s OK then, as long as we make up an imaginary alternative scenario that justifies our decision then we can hold our heads up high as we tell subsequent generations of how we valiantly chose not to do the one thing we could have done to help prevent a second Trump presidency.
If you can point to a time the Democrats did anything to protect reproductive rights on a national scale in the US, I’d be grateful.
These comments reinforce to me that you don’t grasp that the argument is about voting for the most positive outcome overall even when your personal specific policy demands are not being met, rather than a party having to meet every policy position that a voter expects to win their vote.
But in answer to your question, one recent example that springs to mind is the bill the Democrats tried to get passed this July codifying the protections of Roe v Wade, which was defeated by Republicans in the Senate.
Looking forward to hearing why this (as well as all the stuff Christian mentioned above) doesn’t count and would never have come to pass in the imaginary dystopian world of a Harris presidency that would have been indistinguishable from that of Trump.
(By the way, how are those Trump Supreme Court Justice appointments working out for the reproductive rights lobby? A Republican presidency is just the same as a Democratic presidency, right?)
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More broadly, and to move it away from the personalised back-and-forth, I think what we’re really talking about here is an absolutist approach to policitcs rather than a consensus approach.
If I decided that I was only going to vote for a party that represented my interests and policy preferences precisely, I would probably never find that party (unless I started one myself) because large political groups don’t work like that – they end up agreeing policy through wider consensus.
Similarly, if legislators decided that they could only vote for legislation if it 100% represented their preferences, in every line and paragraph, then no legislation would ever get passed, because you couldn’t ever draft legislation that would fully satisfy everybody at the same time.
Those voters and legislators might feel proud that they had stuck to their principles, but nothing would get done.
Politics, when it works, tends to work through consensus rather than everybody feeling they’ve got exactly what they wanted. Does that mean you don’t always get everything you want? Of course. Does it mean you occasionally have to “hold your nose” and vote for the lesser of two evils? Yes, if you want the preferable outcome. But that’s a sensible decision if you want to have any influence over the direction in which politics moves.
Progressive voters deciding to withhold their vote and opt-out of the Democratic process absolutely plays into the hands of the other side, and allows politics to move in the opposite direction.
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`The solution is not to vote for Trump. the solution is for the Democrats to run on what their voters actually want. This is a big part of why Harris lost, she tried appealing to the right, and she saw a collapse in left-wing support as a result. Then she got fewer right-wing votes than Biden did for her troubles.
And yiz are blaming the voters and not Harris for that.
As an American who saw everything firsthand, the irony is that Harris was portrayed as “too liberal” and part of the reason she lost is that it was perceived that she was more concerned about liberal idealism than actually doing something about the economy and other more pragmatic concerns, and that tanked her among moderate voters.
Some perceived Harris as too liberal, and others didn’t think she was liberal enough. Welcome to the Democratic Party’s version of the Kobayashi Maru.
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`The solution is not to vote for Trump. the solution is for the Democrats to run on what their voters actually want. This is a big part of why Harris lost, she tried appealing to the right, and she saw a collapse in left-wing support as a result. Then she got fewer right-wing votes than Biden did for her troubles.
And yiz are blaming the voters and not Harris for that.
As an American who saw everything firsthand, the irony is that Harris was portrayed as “too liberal” and part of the reason she lost is that it was perceived that she was more concerned about liberal idealism than actually doing something about the economy and other more pragmatic concerns, and that tanked her among moderate voters.
Some perceived Harris as too liberal, and others didn’t think she was liberal enough. Welcome to the Democratic Party’s version of the Kobayashi Maru.
If you’re going to be labelled “too liberal” by the usual suspects no matter what you do, it’s a great opportunity to actually go for it and offer some policies that might actually help or even appeal to people. Instead they just meekly went “I’m not too liberal! Look, I hate trans people too uwu.” You’re never going to win at mud wrestling a pig.
EDIT: and they still don’t seem to have grasped that and think the problem is that they weren’t right wing enough. They’re never going to fuck you, my dudes.
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`The solution is not to vote for Trump. the solution is for the Democrats to run on what their voters actually want. This is a big part of why Harris lost, she tried appealing to the right, and she saw a collapse in left-wing support as a result. Then she got fewer right-wing votes than Biden did for her troubles.
And yiz are blaming the voters and not Harris for that.
As an American who saw everything firsthand, the irony is that Harris was portrayed as “too liberal” and part of the reason she lost is that it was perceived that she was more concerned about liberal idealism than actually doing something about the economy and other more pragmatic concerns, and that tanked her among moderate voters.
Some perceived Harris as too liberal, and others didn’t think she was liberal enough. Welcome to the Democratic Party’s version of the Kobayashi Maru.
If you’re going to be labelled “too liberal” by the usual suspects no matter what you do, it’s a great opportunity to actually go for it and offer some policies that might actually help or even appeal to people. Instead they just meekly went “I’m not too liberal! Look, I hate trans people too uwu.” You’re never going to win at mud wrestling a pig.
EDIT: and they still don’t seem to have grasped that and think the problem is that they weren’t right wing enough. They’re never going to fuck you, my dudes.
The problem is that many working-class voters feel the Democrats have abandoned them, including unions. Those people helped the Dems win a lot, but now they feel they are too focused on “high ideals” and not helping them economically. Trump promising cheaper eggs went a lot farther than trans rights for many voters.
It’s okay to go full left, as long as you are including everyone.
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