WYSK: There funded by dark money PACS, but some good reporting has brought out these names: David Koch, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Mark Cuban, Harlan Crow, and Michael Bloomberg. Some of there members are most famous for stopping big bills. Joe Leiberman, for example, single handedly stopped the single payer portion of the ACA. Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsen Simena kept the John Lewis voting rights act from passing, and famously kept the senate from repealing the filibuster.

  • ArugulaZ@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Biden is doing a good job given the circumstances. If you don’t want the total destruction of the United States, there is really only one choice for president… Joe Biden. All other roads lead to the Dark Lord Trumples, the Silly Piggy.

      • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The dems are never going to pass voting reform for the same reason the UK labour party (a considerably further left party than the dems) has never passed it despite pretending they would consider it for multiple decades now. They benefit from FPTP. All they would be doing is diluting their power and handing over a huge portion of the political landscape to socialists who would immediately become relevant, they would then be forced to actually come to agreements with those socialists as opposed to just completely and totally ignoring them as they do currently.

          • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            And you think that the dems wouldn’t magically find someone else to do a spoiler vote on issues they don’t really want to pass? Lmao why are americans this hilariously naive? These people do not represent the average working class person, they represent millionaires and billionaires, they represent the very corporate owners that the fediverse exists to escape from. When you finally realise this you will begin to start seeing through the bullshit. Half of this stuff can be done via Executive powers. They don’t do it because they do not want to.

            • TheDubz87@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Unfortunately, we’re all so polarized left/right, red/blue, that everyone’s become blind to this. The big wigs started a culture/political war to keep us away from the class war. And they’ve won unfortunately. Part of the reason I can’t get I to politics with anyone, because while they all scream left or right, I’m out here on my soap box screaming tear the whole government down and start over. The “progressive” parties will only push as hard as they can without losing any of their/their corporate overlords excess income.

              • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                The liberals will never recognise the trend of history that they’ve created, or take blame. They will blame the people instead, choosing to blame ontological factors over a materialist understanding of history.

            • thallamabond@lemmy.worldOP
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              1 year ago

              The point of this entire post is to try to illustrate how you do not have to buy out an entire political party, when you only have to get to those on the margins of a majority.

              You put all democrats into a little box, things are more nuanced than that. Yes, people with tons of money have tons of influence is US politics, this post illustrates specific names and examples.

              Do you have anything to add to this conversation, or do you just want to paint with broad strokes?

              • bloodfart
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                1 year ago

                That’s a historically illiterate argument. When there is enough of a majority to easily pass anything they want the democrats find all kinds of ways to say no. Their failure to enact the agenda they run on is not caused by slim majorities.

              • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                I will paint party politics with broad strokes because that is exactly what party politics is. Collectives representing collectives. You don’t get to individualise it as and when it suits you, then collectivise it as and when it suits you at other times.

                The path of America from now until its end is liberals increasingly doing nothing to prevent the declining standards of living of millions of people while enriching the people they actually represent up until the population becomes so alienated that they give up on them. Then? Fascism. Until the country is torn into pieces.

                There is no off ramp. And I will continue to advocate that people organise around planning for this inevitability through means outside of the useless dems ushering in this fascism. Anything else is morally reprehensible.

                The Supreme Court just decided that businesses refusing business to protected minorities is free speech. The door is open for segregation again. What are the Dems going to do about it? Actually fucking use any powers in their hands or just tell people to voooooooote? They’ll do nothing, because they’re complicit.

                • thallamabond@lemmy.worldOP
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                  1 year ago

                  Not a fan of todays supreme court decisions today either.

                  The rest of your response is unhinged, I’m going to keep going to my day job, and voting for the most progressive candidates.

                  • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    There’s nothing “unhinged” about recognising the fact that I as a trans person am the subject matter of genocide legislation today and that all rights across the board are regressing as fascists continue to make gains even at times when Dems hold every single power necessary to stop them. The fact that you hand wave the direction of the country away when oppressed groups are screaming at them to do something (spoiler: they’ll keep doing nothing) is part of the reason that you’re seeing this enormous leftwards radicalisation and shift away from liberalism.

                    Resorting to ableism because you don’t like people to your left critiquing you is also partially responsible.

        • voxov7@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Ranked choice voting, fix gerrymandering and voter suppression, end disenfranchisement of felons. Such things. I would love to hear any ideas if you or lemmy had some.

        • Rusticus@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Lots of people say and think that Biden is too old and demented but his has been the best Democratic presidency in 50 years.

            • Rusticus@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Don’t confuse president with presidency. Obama did a poor job of negotiation and was unable to achieve any give and take with republicans. Biden just prevented a government shutdown and has passed far more progressive legislation and has made much more decisive decisions. Biden’s DOD knew Putin was going to attack Ukraine for months and prepared for it.

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                1 year ago

                Biden’s DOD knew Putin was going to attack Ukraine for months and prepared for it.

                As if that matters to a wage earner.

                Under both Obama and Biden, the following statements are true for at least 40,000,000 Americans (probably a whole lot more now): You need multiple jobs to live. You can’t afford health care. You can’t afford to educate yourself or your kids. The majority of the taxes you pay go overseas to fight between eight and ten wars, some of which aren’t ours. Israel gets more in aid from your tax dollars than you do. You are never more than one paycheck away from being ruined and homeless.

                We’re likely going to be an outright fascist state within the next ten years because Democrats, when we gave them power, used it to make the rich wealthier. It’s that simple.

                • Chetzemoka@kbin.social
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                  1 year ago

                  Why does no one making this kind of dumbass comment ever acknowledge the very obvious role that Republican obstruction has played in stopping any Democratic attempt to fix this shit in the past 40 years?

                  Stop gerrymandering, implement approval voting (easier for most people to understand than ranked choice), watch good legislation actually get passed.

                • Rusticus@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Loool. Is this a joke?

                  Republican policies have destroyed the middle class since Reagan. You just said “you can’t afford to educate yourself or your kids” yet fail to acknowledge Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.

                  You are complaining about problems ENTIRELY CAUSED BY REPUBLICANS yet are blaming Democrats. You call when the shuttle lands crazy man.

                  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Republican policies have destroyed the middle class since Reagan.

                    And we’ve given Democrats several majorities in the last four decades, and they’ve used them to empower the wealthy and kill the middle class even more. At some point a reasonable person has to acknowledge that a failure to act constitutes policy.

                    Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan

                    Biden can forgive student loans unilaterally, and he already has in the case of people who were defrauded, so his so-called plan only served to add red tape to a process that didn’t require it. Effectively, he’s running cover for his wealthy donors on this issue and trying to retain positive optics, which apparently worked really well in your case, but I’m guessing you never had student loan debt, or maybe you’d expect more than performative gestures and empty promises.

                  • krolden
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                    1 year ago

                    Student loan forgiveness is just a PR stunt if they dont also make all state/community college free for everyone

    • Billy_Gnosis@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Joe Biden should be in an old folks home. He can barely stand up let alone lead a nation. No fan of the other guy either, but let’s face it. Both of them are only puppets on a string.

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        1 year ago

        Biden has accomplished alot of big things actually, they just aren’t culture war issues so Republicans have never heard of any of them.

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        1 year ago

        “a historic bipartisan infrastructure bill, generational investments in clean energy and semiconductor manufacturing, the first gun safety law in almost 30 years, a bill codifying same-sex marriage, a bill aiding veterans who suffered health effects from burn pits and an electoral reform to prevent a repeat of Trump’s attempt to use Congress to undermine the election.”

        https://thehill.com/homenews/4015533-dear-democrats-stop-talking-about-bidens-age-and-focus-on-his-accomplishments/

        I think he’s doing a fine job.

        • jscummy@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Yeah but what about drag queens and fighting about childrens movies? Clearly those issues are far more important than infrastructure, strengthening the economy and taking care of veterans

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            1 year ago

            In today’s news, people can think about more than one thing at a time. Border policy doesn’t negate the fact that the Climate Bill and the Infrastructure Bill were objectively good, historic pieces of legislation.

            • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I don’t think that answers my question? How many children are still locked up in concentration camps on the border? What is the number? Do you even know or are you just completely checked out from the issue because you are morally reprehensible? Let me illuminate it for you, 1 in 3 of all migrants held in america’s concentration camps is a child.

              The fact the US has concentration camps on the border and that liberals have just conveniently forgotten about it and gone back to brunch as soon as Biden became president is the problem here. You make claims before an election about issues and then do nothing about them when you have every power to do so. Then you wonder why nobody is enthused to vote for a gaggle of liars.

              Pretending that the US is doing literally anything about climate is also a joke. The bill is worthless because it does not change the fact that fossil industries have a higher rate of profit than renewables and until this is resolved every single action on climate is completely performative that only brings us closer and closer to the inevitable disaster that capitalism has caused. What you are doing is greenwashing concentration camps.

                • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  It wasn’t asked in bad faith. If you knew the answer beforehand I would have happily conceded you do in fact care about having concentration camps. Not knowing is absolutely a sign of being checked out, which is half the issue here, none of you actually do anything except vote. You see politics as something you do once every few years and as a spectator sport the rest of the time. You have no concept of electoral vs non-electoral politics, you literally do not take part politically except as entertainment consumption outside of voting. You all have this embarrassing mindset:

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        1 year ago

        They’re both far from the best the USA has to offer, but it’s better to understand and attack the structural barriers to viable 3rd parties here than to get pissed off at the state of disenfranchisement of the average voter and elect a ’ wild card’ out of spite

        • WhiteTiger@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          undefined> attack the structural barriers to viable 3rd parties

          Which starts by voting third party and ignoring people who parrot nonsense like “a vote for X is a vote for Y”.

          • 🐱TheCat@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Nope, terrible idea. You’ve walked into their trap card: First past then post voting. It takes advantage if your impatience and lack of understanding of the system to lure you into throwing your vote away.

            I’d say it starts with bringing ranked or approval voting to your state, supporting voter initiatives in your state that erode the 2 party systems power.

            You need to understand

            • how party primaries function to prevent real candidates from getting in
            • how the 2 parties have sequestered funding and resources that the other parties don’t have access to
            • how the 2 parties have changed the US government to entrench their power