It was so refreshing yesterday to listen to Biden's inauguration speech. The call for unity will no doubt be difficult to put into practice, but all other things being equal it must be better to aim to work with others rather than against them.
It was so refreshing yesterday to listen to Biden's inauguration speech. The call for unity will no doubt be difficult to put into practice, but all other things being equal it must be better to aim to work with others rather than against them.
I agree that lofty goals of cooperation are nice but I hope Biden doesn’t waste too much time trying to appease intransigent Republicans. I believe I heard that “elections have consequences” from somewhere...
I am all for Twitter banning Trump. Online forums, like this one, are able to dictate their own rules and allow, or disallow, anyone from using the services. IMO, it has been a long time coming.
That said, I am extremely discouraged with both Apple and Google banning other platforms such as Parler. The reasoning behind it (because some of its users were using it for insurrection purposes is weak at best. They are not law enforcement. They do not get to decide if a crime is being committed. It’s also extremely hypocritical on their part as they were patting themselves on the back for helping in The Arab Spring movement.
This type of action is what, I believe people like @WarChiefZeke were warning about. Hopefully this can be resolved in the courts. I personally am not a fan of Parler or Gab, but both have their place in this world. I’d rather have these ideas out in the open, where they can be criticized properly then hidden somewhere in the deep web.
I'm surprised the thread reopened this early. But maybe politics in general will be a bit calmer and simpler now. I certainly hope so.
While it was closed I visited a politics thread on a Discord server and it wasn't great. I had a nice conversation with a couple people but another one was unpleasant and it ended up being mostly semantics (I'm lesbian and bi at the same time; why can't I be liberal and socialist at the same time?). That thread has since devolved into memes and one-sentence comments.
I'm glad I have this community to talk to. There aren't many like this one.
The most important thing is the vaccine rollout and the stimulus. I know the actual process of politics can't be done in a few hours, but I'm anxious to see what the Biden administration does. We're in one of the darkest periods of the pandemic and there's only so much time before the more-contagious variant reaches us.
We still have a lot of death and shutdowns awaiting us in the coming months.
I'm also wondering what Democratic rule will look like beyond the pandemic. The Democratic party hasn't held the presidency, the House of Representatives, and the Senate at the same time since 2008-2010, which saw the Great Recession stimulus and Obamacare before the GOP won the Senate and the next 6 years were deadlocked. We may only have a couple years before the GOP retakes one of the houses of Congress, at which point we'd probably see more deadlock again (especially if the Senate goes back to McConnell's leadership).
Biden's announced a bunch of different priorities and I'm not sure which will get implemented, or how. I notice one of the things is a national commission to exercise oversight over law enforcement, which is bound to get a lot of pushback, and plenty of people will want to limit its actual power or staff it with folks who don't want to punish officers who break the law or hurt people.
I'm not sure what we'll see on LGBT issues, either. You can roll back some Trump executive orders, but then what? Biden's mentioned trans folks in his speeches, which is a rarity in general, but there's a difference between actively protecting the community and simply not targeting it. I know some folks have been suspicious of Kamala Harris for having put trans women in men's prisons, but she has a record for supporting other issues.
Healthcare is one of the biggest priorities, but that, too, could be really sticky. The Democratic majority is razor thin, and not every Democrat in Congress votes the same way. Plus, we're not likely to see GOP lawmakers supporting pretty much anything the Biden administration wants--if there's not agreement among Democrats on policy, very little will get done.
The election is over and I hope we won't just assume the Biden administration will be doing what we expected or wanted. With Trump gone, we should have high expectations again.
So, aside from the elections issue, I wanted to comment that yesterday I watched a documentary called Accidental Courtesy. It's about a musician called Daryl Davis, who, as a black man, has been friends with members of the KKK for several decades. Through those friendships, he got them to quit the KKK. Davis has managed to encourage around 200 people to quit that organization. In the documentary he also has a discussion with a representative of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and another discussion with Black Lives Matter activists. I had previously listened to Davis when he was on Joe Rogan's podcast. Maybe I should have posted this in a movie thread, but I believe that the documentary is highly political. I'd be curious to know if anyone else has seen it, and what your thoughts are.
I mean, there is an active attempt by Republicans to pretend it never happend, but the attack on the Capitol was far, far worse than we knew within the first 48 hours. While there were most certainly people in that crowd who were basically on an out of control field trip, their numbers allowed people who were absolutely on a mission to do something far more grave to get as far as they did. And they wanted to assassinate Mike Pence and, presumably, any Democrat they could get their hands on. And they were about 60-90 seconds from being within range of doing so.
I'm not just gonna let this fall down the memory-hole. The outgoing President incited an assault on a co-equal branch of government, and at least half his party (mostly in the House) are TOTALLY FINE with it.
As for yesterday, Biden did exactly what was expected, emphasized unity, and eliminated much of Trump's legacy with a stroke of the pen. The incoming press secretary was not adversarial, encouraged tough questions, and promised to hold a briefing daily Monday-Friday.
And, of course, we've now learned this morning that there was literally NO vaccine distribution plan. Nothing. I saw a tweet comparing what Biden is inheriting to a picture of Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park staring at a pile of dinosaur shit. There is nothing to envy about Biden's task. Once again, Democrats have been handed a country on the brink, and are asked to clean it up while the people who caused the disaster in the first place scream about how they go about it at every turn.
So, aside from the elections issue, I wanted to comment that yesterday I watched a documentary called Accidental Courtesy. It's about a musician called Daryl Davis, who, as a black man, has been friends with members of the KKK for several decades. Through those friendships, he got them to quit the KKK. Davis has managed to encourage around 200 people to quit that organization. In the documentary he also has a discussion with a representative of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and another discussion with Black Lives Matter activists. I had previously listened to Davis when he was on Joe Rogan's podcast. Maybe I should have posted this in a movie thread, but I believe that the documentary is highly political. I'd be curious to know if anyone else has seen it, and what your thoughts are.
I saw that guy before too. It might even have been on the recommendation of a fellow forumite (I can't remember). I do remember it was very enlightening and showed how human beings aren't all that different once you cut through all the layers of bullshit we surround ourselves with.
So, aside from the elections issue, I wanted to comment that yesterday I watched a documentary called Accidental Courtesy. It's about a musician called Daryl Davis, who, as a black man, has been friends with members of the KKK for several decades. Through those friendships, he got them to quit the KKK. Davis has managed to encourage around 200 people to quit that organization. In the documentary he also has a discussion with a representative of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and another discussion with Black Lives Matter activists. I had previously listened to Davis when he was on Joe Rogan's podcast. Maybe I should have posted this in a movie thread, but I believe that the documentary is highly political. I'd be curious to know if anyone else has seen it, and what your thoughts are.
I've seen it, it's nice, but holding it up as some kind of standard people should be expected to live up to is a bunch of BS. No one is obligated to reach out and turn the other cheek to people who don't think they should have equal rights, or even exist. As if it's more important for a victimized party in any given situation to show forgiveness than for the abuser to change their behavior.
I've never understood the fascination with holding up this anecdotal example as proof positive of the way forward. I mean, yeah, if 10,000 African-Americans made a concerted effort to each befriend 3 KKK members for 20 years, I guess it would really thin out their ranks. So would a robot appearing from the sky shooting rainbow lasers at them. Neither are going to happen.
So, aside from the elections issue, I wanted to comment that yesterday I watched a documentary called Accidental Courtesy. It's about a musician called Daryl Davis, who, as a black man, has been friends with members of the KKK for several decades. Through those friendships, he got them to quit the KKK. Davis has managed to encourage around 200 people to quit that organization. In the documentary he also has a discussion with a representative of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and another discussion with Black Lives Matter activists. I had previously listened to Davis when he was on Joe Rogan's podcast. Maybe I should have posted this in a movie thread, but I believe that the documentary is highly political. I'd be curious to know if anyone else has seen it, and what your thoughts are.
I've seen it, it's nice, but holding it up as some kind of standard people should be expected to live up to is a bunch of BS. No one is obligated to reach out and turn the other cheek to people who don't think they should have equal rights, or even exist. As if it's more important for a victimized party in any given situation to show forgiveness than for the abuser to change their behavior.
Your alternative, though justified, could well lead to a never-ending cycle of whoever's in power screwing over the people who aren't. Besides, it wasn't really 'forgiveness' he was selling, it was more like je challenged their viewpoints by showing them how they're wrong. It probably wouldn't work on a total zealot, but those guys are too far gone anyway...
I've heard the rumor that Biden is 'Q' now. Gotta love conspiracy theories...
As far as I can tell, Qanon as it is currently constructed fell apart yesterday (we've been over what they believed was going to happen in private messages). But since Q is just a new paint job on conspiracy theories that are hundreds of years old, it will reemerge as something else with a month or two.
So, aside from the elections issue, I wanted to comment that yesterday I watched a documentary called Accidental Courtesy. It's about a musician called Daryl Davis, who, as a black man, has been friends with members of the KKK for several decades. Through those friendships, he got them to quit the KKK. Davis has managed to encourage around 200 people to quit that organization. In the documentary he also has a discussion with a representative of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and another discussion with Black Lives Matter activists. I had previously listened to Davis when he was on Joe Rogan's podcast. Maybe I should have posted this in a movie thread, but I believe that the documentary is highly political. I'd be curious to know if anyone else has seen it, and what your thoughts are.
I've seen it, it's nice, but holding it up as some kind of standard people should be expected to live up to is a bunch of BS. No one is obligated to reach out and turn the other cheek to people who don't think they should have equal rights, or even exist. As if it's more important for a victimized party in any given situation to show forgiveness than for the abuser to change their behavior.
Your alternative, though justified, could well lead to a never-ending cycle of whoever's in power screwing over the people who aren't. Besides, it wasn't really 'forgiveness' he was selling, it was more like je challenged their viewpoints by showing them how they're wrong. It probably wouldn't work on a total zealot, but those guys are too far gone anyway...
My point is that most human beings aren't capable of this kind of long-term project. If you're a religious person, this guy is the very definition of the phrase "patience of a saint". There is a reason there aren't many saints.
Moreover, even though I support Biden, I think his main message of unity in the face of this Republican Party is a fool's errand. That surely makes him a better person than me, and there really isn't anything else he CAN say. But it isn't going to work. He actually believes it can. It's hard for me to fathom considering he had a front row seat to the 8 years of the Obama Administration and just ran a campaign against Donald Trump, but he genuinely thinks it's possible.
It's pretty clear that there are enough Blue Dog holdouts in a 50/50 Senate to prevent the dissolution of the filibuster. If that's the case, then passing anything beyond this initial 1.9 trillion relief bill is gonna be like pulling teeth. Frankly, I'd just load everything they want to pass with massive pork projects for West Virginia to essentially legally buy off Joe Manchin, because that is what it's going to take.
On the other hand, Biden is ignoring the disingenuous, bad faith cries from Republicans about "norms" and is just firing or putting on Administrative leave everyone Trump tried to install in civil service positions in the last 3 months, so he is showing he does have a backbone in that regard.
The Democrats have two years, at which time Republicans will almost certainly retake the House. Use your power when you have it to enact your agenda. Because the hold on power isn't going to last. But as Obamacare shows, once you entrench something into law and the American people come to accept it as normal, it's nearly impossible to take away.
Thankfully, because of his laziness in regards to the legislative process, everything Trump did besides the tax cut was by Executive Order. Which means it's mostly all going to gone within the month. Republicans essentially traded tax cuts for the 1% and judges for taking American democracy itself to the brink, and about half a million dead people. They would no doubt make the same bargain again.
I appreciate the laser focus on the pandemic from the moment they were sworn in yesterday, but they are trying to climb out of a hole so deep it's almost impossible to see the light at the top. Biden's Chief of Staff Ron Klain did not sugarcoat it. He said it's going to be bad for some time yet, but they are pulling out all stops to end this as soon as humanly possible. Which is a far cry from COMPLETELY IGNORING it for the last 6 months.
I honestly don't know how to properly contextualize the previous Administration failure on COVID-19 in combination with what happened after the election leading up to January 6th. The only historical failure/disgrace on that level is Andrew Johnson's abandonment of Reconstruction. Other than that, Trump stands alone as the worst President of all-time. We'll be living with the repercussions for the rest of our lives.
I certainly agree that expecting other people to have the patience that Daryl Davis has is too much, he's essentially on the level of Mahatma Gandhi. His methods have been questioned for focusing too much on a person-to-person scale, instead of focusing on a more general approach. Regardless, whatever we may think of his methods, at the end of the day, making 200 people quit the KKK is no small feat, if you ask me.
I certainly agree that expecting other people to have the patience that Daryl Davis has is too much, he's essentially on the level of Mahatma Gandhi. His methods have been questioned for focusing too much on a person-to-person scale, instead of focusing on a more general approach. Regardless, whatever we may think of his methods, at the end of the day, making 200 people quit the KKK is no small feat, if you ask me.
I'm not questioning him at all. I'm questioning anyone who watches it and says "see, all you have to do is be nice and understanding, and eventually they'll admit they were wrong." The idea that the agency for stopping bad behavior is the responsibility of the person on the receiving end is pretty repulsive to me. That's how domestic abuse goes on for years if not decades.
Without someone reaching out to the other side we will one day go through what Rwanda did.
We are in charge, you will all die!
Ah ha! Now we are in charge! You will all die!
That is not how domestic abuse lasts so long by the way. Not to be abrasive but I cannot imagine you know anything about domestic abuse if you think that. Simply not factual at all. I won’t say anymore on that, just, it was a bad example. Kay?
I think that most would agree that there is so much wrong with the right at this time. Personally, I don’t think the average person voting republican understand exactly what the right is doing, or maybe they do. Trump created a new dynamic with his rhetoric. Race, politics, even individual people, he used his speeches to create an environment of hate. I don’t think Biden is a person to help fix that, I think he is the person to fix it. He may not be as far left as some would like but that is a good thing. If someone is looking for reform and just wants to see the other side burn for their sins, it will only burn our world to the ground. Attacking right now is not the answer, reaching out our hand is.
Well if Trump's big announcement is that he's starting up the new Patriot Party with Sarah Palin then by default the Republican Party will be in the center. Yay, I'll get to vote GOP again (and lose)!
I'm already over the idea that there is any dialogue to be had with Republican lawmakers after hearing McConnell and McCarthy today. Their performative definition of unity is "do whatever we want even though we lost".
I can't put this any more plainly to Democrats (not like any of them are gonna read this): you won, they lost. If the shoe was on the other foot we know with 1000% certainty what Republicans would do. And now even Collins, Romney, and Murkowski are signalling a no vote on the COVID-19 package. Their entire strategy is to block everything you try to do and then blame you for not enacting it. Nuke the damn filibuster, offer to build every damn project imaginable in West Virginia to get Manchin on board, and enact your agenda.
It would be one thing if these people ACTUALLY had to physically filibuster (as in, literally speaking on the floor to hold up a vote). That is how it used to be done. Now someone just has to raise their hand, say "I'm filibustering", and all of a sudden, a simple majority threshold for passing bills becomes damn near needing 2/3rds of the chamber to pass. Moreover, even though there are 50 Senators from each party (with VP Harris giving control the the Dems), the seats held by Democrats represent 41 million more people than the states represented by Republicans, which by quick math is about 1/7th of the entire population of the country as the margin.
The asymmetrical playing field Democrats have to navigate is tough enough without pretending honest good faith gestures will make a party that is now denying an attempted insurrection led by their leader didn't take place two weeks ago come to the table. For the love of god, stop trying to play a fair game with people who have thrown out the rulebook.
Well if Trump's big announcement is that he's starting up the new Patriot Party with Sarah Palin then by default the Republican Party will be in the center. Yay, I'll get to vote GOP again (and lose)!
Trump better book some FOX News interviews with Hannity soon then, because without Twitter, he has become like a fire deprived of oxygen. It's actually been stunning how impotent it's made him seem. It's clear in hindsight how all his power and control came from his ability to be omnipresent in everyone's life and the center of attention EVERY day for four years.
I'm already over the idea that there is any dialogue to be had with Republican lawmakers after hearing McConnell and McCarthy today. Their performative definition of unity is "do whatever we want even though we lost".
I can't put this any more plainly to Democrats (not like any of them are gonna read this): you won, they lost. If the shoe was on the other foot we know with 1000% certainty what Republicans would do. And now even Collins, Romney, and Murkowski are signalling a no vote on the COVID-19 package. Their entire strategy is to block everything you try to do and then blame you for not enacting it. Nuke the damn filibuster, offer to build every damn project imaginable in West Virginia to get Manchin on board, and enact your agenda.
It would be one thing if these people ACTUALLY had to physically filibuster (as in, literally speaking on the floor to hold up a vote). That is how it used to be done. Now someone just has to raise their hand, say "I'm filibustering", and all of a sudden, a simple majority threshold for passing bills becomes damn near needing 2/3rds of the chamber to pass. Moreover, even though there are 50 Senators from each party (with VP Harris giving control the the Dems), the seats held by Democrats represent 41 million more people than the states represented by Republicans, which by quick math is about 1/7th of the entire population of the country as the margin.
The asymmetrical playing field Democrats have to navigate is tough enough without pretending honest good faith gestures will make a party that is now denying an attempted insurrection led by their leader didn't take place two weeks ago. For the love of god, stop trying to play a fair game with people who have thrown out the rulebook.
Biden will have to do everything by executive order, just like it's been done for the last 12 or more years. Congress is absolutely pathetic. They should be the strongest branch of our government but they hide behind so-called norms, bow to Presidents and cower from the Supreme Court. A bunch of do-nothing blowhards...
Well if Trump's big announcement is that he's starting up the new Patriot Party with Sarah Palin then by default the Republican Party will be in the center. Yay, I'll get to vote GOP again (and lose)!
First - you should vote for whomever you want to vote for. That's obviously your inalienable democratic right (and I know you dont need me to tell you that)
That said, stench and stain of Trump is deep in the GOP. If he ends up leaving the party, I dont think it's going to be "Reagan's Party" again overnight. It's going to be rife with McConnells, who tried to dismantle democratic norms like the SCOTUS by stealing a seat.
It's going to be rife with McCarthy's, who voted to reject the electors from several states because he didnt like who those states voted for.
It's going to be rife with Lindsey Grahams - who's hypocrisy knows no bounds/
If Trump leaves the GOP, that's good for the country. The GOP still has a *lot* of soul searching and answering to do before it's back to being okay. In my opinion, at least.
Well if Trump's big announcement is that he's starting up the new Patriot Party with Sarah Palin then by default the Republican Party will be in the center. Yay, I'll get to vote GOP again (and lose)!
First - you should vote for whomever you want to vote for. That's obviously your inalienable democratic right (and I know you dont need me to tell you that)
That said, stench and stain of Trump is deep in the GOP. If he ends up leaving the party, I dont think it's going to be "Reagan's Party" again overnight. It's going to be rife with McConnells, who tried to dismantle democratic norms like the SCOTUS by stealing a seat.
It's going to be rife with McCarthy's, who voted to reject the electors from several states because he didnt like who those states voted for.
It's going to be rife with Lindsey Grahams - who's hypocrisy knows no bounds/
If Trump leaves the GOP, that's good for the country. The GOP still has a *lot* of soul searching and answering to do before it's back to being okay. In my opinion, at least.
Losing the fringe 'Trump is God' cult would be a good start though...
I'm already over the idea that there is any dialogue to be had with Republican lawmakers after hearing McConnell and McCarthy today. Their performative definition of unity is "do whatever we want even though we lost".
I can't put this any more plainly to Democrats (not like any of them are gonna read this): you won, they lost. If the shoe was on the other foot we know with 1000% certainty what Republicans would do. And now even Collins, Romney, and Murkowski are signalling a no vote on the COVID-19 package. Their entire strategy is to block everything you try to do and then blame you for not enacting it. Nuke the damn filibuster, offer to build every damn project imaginable in West Virginia to get Manchin on board, and enact your agenda.
It would be one thing if these people ACTUALLY had to physically filibuster (as in, literally speaking on the floor to hold up a vote). That is how it used to be done. Now someone just has to raise their hand, say "I'm filibustering", and all of a sudden, a simple majority threshold for passing bills becomes damn near needing 2/3rds of the chamber to pass. Moreover, even though there are 50 Senators from each party (with VP Harris giving control the the Dems), the seats held by Democrats represent 41 million more people than the states represented by Republicans, which by quick math is about 1/7th of the entire population of the country as the margin.
The asymmetrical playing field Democrats have to navigate is tough enough without pretending honest good faith gestures will make a party that is now denying an attempted insurrection led by their leader didn't take place two weeks ago. For the love of god, stop trying to play a fair game with people who have thrown out the rulebook.
Biden will have to do everything by executive order, just like it's been done for the last 12 or more years. Congress is absolutely pathetic. They should be the strongest branch of our government but they hide behind so-called norms, bow to Presidents and cower from the Supreme Court. A bunch of do-nothing blowhards...
They'll probably get the stimulus bill (watered down) and one or two others they put all their political capital into. By June of 2022, the mid-terms will be in full swing. You have to operate under the assumption your Presidency (as far as legislation) is 18 months, not 4 years.
Well if Trump's big announcement is that he's starting up the new Patriot Party with Sarah Palin then by default the Republican Party will be in the center. Yay, I'll get to vote GOP again (and lose)!
First - you should vote for whomever you want to vote for. That's obviously your inalienable democratic right (and I know you dont need me to tell you that)
That said, stench and stain of Trump is deep in the GOP. If he ends up leaving the party, I dont think it's going to be "Reagan's Party" again overnight. It's going to be rife with McConnells, who tried to dismantle democratic norms like the SCOTUS by stealing a seat.
It's going to be rife with McCarthy's, who voted to reject the electors from several states because he didnt like who those states voted for.
It's going to be rife with Lindsey Grahams - who's hypocrisy knows no bounds/
If Trump leaves the GOP, that's good for the country. The GOP still has a *lot* of soul searching and answering to do before it's back to being okay. In my opinion, at least.
Losing the fringe 'Trump is God' cult would be a good start though...
The outward Evangelical talk was MUCH greater during the Bush years (I was just thinking about this last night). Terry Schaviao and the gay marriage ban amendments anyone?? The problem with Trump was that he literally became the Golden Calf. I think an underrated part of my resentment of Trump is how he managed to rehabilitate George W. Bush into an elder statesman by simply existing.
Could either Bush (Sr. Or W.) or Reagan win a Republican primary in 2020?? I think the answer is an obvious "no".
The tell about the Republican Party since the year 2000 is that the moment their Presidents leave office, there is a full-court offensive to pretend they never existed.
Reagan could win a primary in 2020. He's a star, when you're a star they let you do it. I mean he's not so different from Romney.
Reagan was hardly a "star" by any definition until he became Governor of California. He was a C-list actor, and was a staunch Roosevelt Democrat until he cynically sold out his fellow co-workers to the House Unamerican Activities Committee, ruining the lives of plenty of people in the process. He then became a pitchman for General Electric.
He certainly acted his way through the Presidency. I once read a quote from a staffer that said "if we told him to go out into the Rose Garden, spin around three times, throw an acorn, and walk back into the White House, he wouldn't even ask why." He was barely running the country at all is his second term. His Chief of Staff Don Regan couldn't even talk to him on a daily basis because Nancy was already concealing his dementia from the public.
Yeah I agree just saying his demeanor and so forth is not so different from Romney. There's barely room for Romney in today's GOP and there might barely be room for Reagan.
Biden doing pretty much everything possible to help those struggling economically that he can do without legislation. Eviction and foreclosure moratorium til March, student loan deferral at 0% interest until October, and additional $100 in EBT benefits for eligible families per month. And while the minimum wage being raised to $15.00 an hour across the board would require passing a law (and would likely be phased in over many years), he CAN demand that anyone contracted to do work for the federal government pay this and provide emergency paid leave. And he has also signed directive that people can refuse a job they believe puts their health at risk during the pandemic and still keep their unemployment benefits.
The Republican Party has essentially been pretending the crisis is over since Trump got out of Walter Reed. This has led to the public (even more so than they already were) also deciding it's over. At this hour it is literally the worst it has ever been, with 4100+ people dying a day. The entirety of the focus of the last Administration for the last 3 months has been focused on overturning an election while the world burns around them. Beyond the measures above, and beyond the proposed bailout package, simply having the Executive Branch focused on and talking about the pandemic on a daily basis serves to remind people that, no, things are not normal, and if we want them to be normal, we have to actually do something about it and not engage in magical thinking.
There is a reason it is called the bully pulpit. There is a reason that Trump using it to talk only about his election loss since November caused the pandemic to recede from the headlines. It's called leadership because a significant portion of the population is looking for some kind of guidance. If you pretend something isn't a problem, that filters down to the millions in the masses. If you acknowledge something is a problem, and level with people about the challenges, that filters down too.
Yeah. It's becoming evident (It kindof already was, but even moreso now) that Trump effectively stopped running the government as soon as he lost the election. That was 2+ months of the government essentially running on inertia plus the little shoves here and there from Pence.
Those two months have enabled the pandemic to be worse than ever before too. Biden has an uphill climb on this, but frankly it's reassuring to know someone who actually wants to perform the duties of the president is currently in the oval office.
I've been paying attention to right-wing messaging the last few days, and it seems they have all settled on is some variation of "what about the 75 million people who voted for Trump"??
First off, it was 74 million. But secondly, and more importantly, it's an attempt to dismiss and erase the votes of the 81 million people who voted for Biden and won. Even when they aren't trying to flat-out erase the votes of entire swing-states, the attitude and message is that votes by Democrats are not legitimate and they have no right to have what they voted for implemented.
You'll also hear alot about the "radical leftist agenda". I doubt most Republican Senators could even tell you what they specifically oppose in the COVID-19 bill, because it would make them look like the heartless jackasses they are. They don't need a reason to oppose it, other than that Democrats are in favor of it. And it's hard to have a negotiation with a side who doesn't even have a set of wants or demands. Their demand is "nothing".
There is a longer thread I read to explain this, but to summarize, Trump treated blue states like hostile nations. "Unity" means not withholding disaster relief because a state didn't vote for you collectively. It doesn't mean surrendering your entire agenda so the other side still gets to enact their policy goals instead. And that's the framework Republicans are attempting to set up around the word.
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I agree that lofty goals of cooperation are nice but I hope Biden doesn’t waste too much time trying to appease intransigent Republicans. I believe I heard that “elections have consequences” from somewhere...
That said, I am extremely discouraged with both Apple and Google banning other platforms such as Parler. The reasoning behind it (because some of its users were using it for insurrection purposes is weak at best. They are not law enforcement. They do not get to decide if a crime is being committed. It’s also extremely hypocritical on their part as they were patting themselves on the back for helping in The Arab Spring movement.
This type of action is what, I believe people like @WarChiefZeke were warning about. Hopefully this can be resolved in the courts. I personally am not a fan of Parler or Gab, but both have their place in this world. I’d rather have these ideas out in the open, where they can be criticized properly then hidden somewhere in the deep web.
While it was closed I visited a politics thread on a Discord server and it wasn't great. I had a nice conversation with a couple people but another one was unpleasant and it ended up being mostly semantics (I'm lesbian and bi at the same time; why can't I be liberal and socialist at the same time?). That thread has since devolved into memes and one-sentence comments.
I'm glad I have this community to talk to. There aren't many like this one.
The most important thing is the vaccine rollout and the stimulus. I know the actual process of politics can't be done in a few hours, but I'm anxious to see what the Biden administration does. We're in one of the darkest periods of the pandemic and there's only so much time before the more-contagious variant reaches us.
We still have a lot of death and shutdowns awaiting us in the coming months.
I'm also wondering what Democratic rule will look like beyond the pandemic. The Democratic party hasn't held the presidency, the House of Representatives, and the Senate at the same time since 2008-2010, which saw the Great Recession stimulus and Obamacare before the GOP won the Senate and the next 6 years were deadlocked. We may only have a couple years before the GOP retakes one of the houses of Congress, at which point we'd probably see more deadlock again (especially if the Senate goes back to McConnell's leadership).
Biden's announced a bunch of different priorities and I'm not sure which will get implemented, or how. I notice one of the things is a national commission to exercise oversight over law enforcement, which is bound to get a lot of pushback, and plenty of people will want to limit its actual power or staff it with folks who don't want to punish officers who break the law or hurt people.
I'm not sure what we'll see on LGBT issues, either. You can roll back some Trump executive orders, but then what? Biden's mentioned trans folks in his speeches, which is a rarity in general, but there's a difference between actively protecting the community and simply not targeting it. I know some folks have been suspicious of Kamala Harris for having put trans women in men's prisons, but she has a record for supporting other issues.
Healthcare is one of the biggest priorities, but that, too, could be really sticky. The Democratic majority is razor thin, and not every Democrat in Congress votes the same way. Plus, we're not likely to see GOP lawmakers supporting pretty much anything the Biden administration wants--if there's not agreement among Democrats on policy, very little will get done.
The election is over and I hope we won't just assume the Biden administration will be doing what we expected or wanted. With Trump gone, we should have high expectations again.
I'm not just gonna let this fall down the memory-hole. The outgoing President incited an assault on a co-equal branch of government, and at least half his party (mostly in the House) are TOTALLY FINE with it.
As for yesterday, Biden did exactly what was expected, emphasized unity, and eliminated much of Trump's legacy with a stroke of the pen. The incoming press secretary was not adversarial, encouraged tough questions, and promised to hold a briefing daily Monday-Friday.
And, of course, we've now learned this morning that there was literally NO vaccine distribution plan. Nothing. I saw a tweet comparing what Biden is inheriting to a picture of Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park staring at a pile of dinosaur shit. There is nothing to envy about Biden's task. Once again, Democrats have been handed a country on the brink, and are asked to clean it up while the people who caused the disaster in the first place scream about how they go about it at every turn.
I saw that guy before too. It might even have been on the recommendation of a fellow forumite (I can't remember). I do remember it was very enlightening and showed how human beings aren't all that different once you cut through all the layers of bullshit we surround ourselves with.
I've seen it, it's nice, but holding it up as some kind of standard people should be expected to live up to is a bunch of BS. No one is obligated to reach out and turn the other cheek to people who don't think they should have equal rights, or even exist. As if it's more important for a victimized party in any given situation to show forgiveness than for the abuser to change their behavior.
I've never understood the fascination with holding up this anecdotal example as proof positive of the way forward. I mean, yeah, if 10,000 African-Americans made a concerted effort to each befriend 3 KKK members for 20 years, I guess it would really thin out their ranks. So would a robot appearing from the sky shooting rainbow lasers at them. Neither are going to happen.
Your alternative, though justified, could well lead to a never-ending cycle of whoever's in power screwing over the people who aren't. Besides, it wasn't really 'forgiveness' he was selling, it was more like je challenged their viewpoints by showing them how they're wrong. It probably wouldn't work on a total zealot, but those guys are too far gone anyway...
As far as I can tell, Qanon as it is currently constructed fell apart yesterday (we've been over what they believed was going to happen in private messages). But since Q is just a new paint job on conspiracy theories that are hundreds of years old, it will reemerge as something else with a month or two.
My point is that most human beings aren't capable of this kind of long-term project. If you're a religious person, this guy is the very definition of the phrase "patience of a saint". There is a reason there aren't many saints.
Moreover, even though I support Biden, I think his main message of unity in the face of this Republican Party is a fool's errand. That surely makes him a better person than me, and there really isn't anything else he CAN say. But it isn't going to work. He actually believes it can. It's hard for me to fathom considering he had a front row seat to the 8 years of the Obama Administration and just ran a campaign against Donald Trump, but he genuinely thinks it's possible.
It's pretty clear that there are enough Blue Dog holdouts in a 50/50 Senate to prevent the dissolution of the filibuster. If that's the case, then passing anything beyond this initial 1.9 trillion relief bill is gonna be like pulling teeth. Frankly, I'd just load everything they want to pass with massive pork projects for West Virginia to essentially legally buy off Joe Manchin, because that is what it's going to take.
On the other hand, Biden is ignoring the disingenuous, bad faith cries from Republicans about "norms" and is just firing or putting on Administrative leave everyone Trump tried to install in civil service positions in the last 3 months, so he is showing he does have a backbone in that regard.
The Democrats have two years, at which time Republicans will almost certainly retake the House. Use your power when you have it to enact your agenda. Because the hold on power isn't going to last. But as Obamacare shows, once you entrench something into law and the American people come to accept it as normal, it's nearly impossible to take away.
Thankfully, because of his laziness in regards to the legislative process, everything Trump did besides the tax cut was by Executive Order. Which means it's mostly all going to gone within the month. Republicans essentially traded tax cuts for the 1% and judges for taking American democracy itself to the brink, and about half a million dead people. They would no doubt make the same bargain again.
I appreciate the laser focus on the pandemic from the moment they were sworn in yesterday, but they are trying to climb out of a hole so deep it's almost impossible to see the light at the top. Biden's Chief of Staff Ron Klain did not sugarcoat it. He said it's going to be bad for some time yet, but they are pulling out all stops to end this as soon as humanly possible. Which is a far cry from COMPLETELY IGNORING it for the last 6 months.
I honestly don't know how to properly contextualize the previous Administration failure on COVID-19 in combination with what happened after the election leading up to January 6th. The only historical failure/disgrace on that level is Andrew Johnson's abandonment of Reconstruction. Other than that, Trump stands alone as the worst President of all-time. We'll be living with the repercussions for the rest of our lives.
I'm not questioning him at all. I'm questioning anyone who watches it and says "see, all you have to do is be nice and understanding, and eventually they'll admit they were wrong." The idea that the agency for stopping bad behavior is the responsibility of the person on the receiving end is pretty repulsive to me. That's how domestic abuse goes on for years if not decades.
We are in charge, you will all die!
Ah ha! Now we are in charge! You will all die!
That is not how domestic abuse lasts so long by the way. Not to be abrasive but I cannot imagine you know anything about domestic abuse if you think that. Simply not factual at all. I won’t say anymore on that, just, it was a bad example. Kay?
I think that most would agree that there is so much wrong with the right at this time. Personally, I don’t think the average person voting republican understand exactly what the right is doing, or maybe they do. Trump created a new dynamic with his rhetoric. Race, politics, even individual people, he used his speeches to create an environment of hate. I don’t think Biden is a person to help fix that, I think he is the person to fix it. He may not be as far left as some would like but that is a good thing. If someone is looking for reform and just wants to see the other side burn for their sins, it will only burn our world to the ground. Attacking right now is not the answer, reaching out our hand is.
My take on it anyway.
I can't put this any more plainly to Democrats (not like any of them are gonna read this): you won, they lost. If the shoe was on the other foot we know with 1000% certainty what Republicans would do. And now even Collins, Romney, and Murkowski are signalling a no vote on the COVID-19 package. Their entire strategy is to block everything you try to do and then blame you for not enacting it. Nuke the damn filibuster, offer to build every damn project imaginable in West Virginia to get Manchin on board, and enact your agenda.
It would be one thing if these people ACTUALLY had to physically filibuster (as in, literally speaking on the floor to hold up a vote). That is how it used to be done. Now someone just has to raise their hand, say "I'm filibustering", and all of a sudden, a simple majority threshold for passing bills becomes damn near needing 2/3rds of the chamber to pass. Moreover, even though there are 50 Senators from each party (with VP Harris giving control the the Dems), the seats held by Democrats represent 41 million more people than the states represented by Republicans, which by quick math is about 1/7th of the entire population of the country as the margin.
The asymmetrical playing field Democrats have to navigate is tough enough without pretending honest good faith gestures will make a party that is now denying an attempted insurrection led by their leader didn't take place two weeks ago come to the table. For the love of god, stop trying to play a fair game with people who have thrown out the rulebook.
Trump better book some FOX News interviews with Hannity soon then, because without Twitter, he has become like a fire deprived of oxygen. It's actually been stunning how impotent it's made him seem. It's clear in hindsight how all his power and control came from his ability to be omnipresent in everyone's life and the center of attention EVERY day for four years.
Biden will have to do everything by executive order, just like it's been done for the last 12 or more years. Congress is absolutely pathetic. They should be the strongest branch of our government but they hide behind so-called norms, bow to Presidents and cower from the Supreme Court. A bunch of do-nothing blowhards...
First - you should vote for whomever you want to vote for. That's obviously your inalienable democratic right (and I know you dont need me to tell you that)
That said, stench and stain of Trump is deep in the GOP. If he ends up leaving the party, I dont think it's going to be "Reagan's Party" again overnight. It's going to be rife with McConnells, who tried to dismantle democratic norms like the SCOTUS by stealing a seat.
It's going to be rife with McCarthy's, who voted to reject the electors from several states because he didnt like who those states voted for.
It's going to be rife with Lindsey Grahams - who's hypocrisy knows no bounds/
If Trump leaves the GOP, that's good for the country. The GOP still has a *lot* of soul searching and answering to do before it's back to being okay. In my opinion, at least.
Losing the fringe 'Trump is God' cult would be a good start though...
They'll probably get the stimulus bill (watered down) and one or two others they put all their political capital into. By June of 2022, the mid-terms will be in full swing. You have to operate under the assumption your Presidency (as far as legislation) is 18 months, not 4 years.
The outward Evangelical talk was MUCH greater during the Bush years (I was just thinking about this last night). Terry Schaviao and the gay marriage ban amendments anyone?? The problem with Trump was that he literally became the Golden Calf. I think an underrated part of my resentment of Trump is how he managed to rehabilitate George W. Bush into an elder statesman by simply existing.
Could either Bush (Sr. Or W.) or Reagan win a Republican primary in 2020?? I think the answer is an obvious "no".
The tell about the Republican Party since the year 2000 is that the moment their Presidents leave office, there is a full-court offensive to pretend they never existed.
Reagan was hardly a "star" by any definition until he became Governor of California. He was a C-list actor, and was a staunch Roosevelt Democrat until he cynically sold out his fellow co-workers to the House Unamerican Activities Committee, ruining the lives of plenty of people in the process. He then became a pitchman for General Electric.
He certainly acted his way through the Presidency. I once read a quote from a staffer that said "if we told him to go out into the Rose Garden, spin around three times, throw an acorn, and walk back into the White House, he wouldn't even ask why." He was barely running the country at all is his second term. His Chief of Staff Don Regan couldn't even talk to him on a daily basis because Nancy was already concealing his dementia from the public.
The Republican Party has essentially been pretending the crisis is over since Trump got out of Walter Reed. This has led to the public (even more so than they already were) also deciding it's over. At this hour it is literally the worst it has ever been, with 4100+ people dying a day. The entirety of the focus of the last Administration for the last 3 months has been focused on overturning an election while the world burns around them. Beyond the measures above, and beyond the proposed bailout package, simply having the Executive Branch focused on and talking about the pandemic on a daily basis serves to remind people that, no, things are not normal, and if we want them to be normal, we have to actually do something about it and not engage in magical thinking.
There is a reason it is called the bully pulpit. There is a reason that Trump using it to talk only about his election loss since November caused the pandemic to recede from the headlines. It's called leadership because a significant portion of the population is looking for some kind of guidance. If you pretend something isn't a problem, that filters down to the millions in the masses. If you acknowledge something is a problem, and level with people about the challenges, that filters down too.
Those two months have enabled the pandemic to be worse than ever before too. Biden has an uphill climb on this, but frankly it's reassuring to know someone who actually wants to perform the duties of the president is currently in the oval office.
First off, it was 74 million. But secondly, and more importantly, it's an attempt to dismiss and erase the votes of the 81 million people who voted for Biden and won. Even when they aren't trying to flat-out erase the votes of entire swing-states, the attitude and message is that votes by Democrats are not legitimate and they have no right to have what they voted for implemented.
You'll also hear alot about the "radical leftist agenda". I doubt most Republican Senators could even tell you what they specifically oppose in the COVID-19 bill, because it would make them look like the heartless jackasses they are. They don't need a reason to oppose it, other than that Democrats are in favor of it. And it's hard to have a negotiation with a side who doesn't even have a set of wants or demands. Their demand is "nothing".
There is a longer thread I read to explain this, but to summarize, Trump treated blue states like hostile nations. "Unity" means not withholding disaster relief because a state didn't vote for you collectively. It doesn't mean surrendering your entire agenda so the other side still gets to enact their policy goals instead. And that's the framework Republicans are attempting to set up around the word.