it could just be covid brain, but.... isn't this the same thing we were talking about for like the past page?
I'm kinda tired of performative legal threats. The letter is good, but honestly, Giuliani will most likely be flat broke shortly. LP is funny or whatever, but they didn't really have a noticeable effect on the election and as soon as its convenient, they will start making their attack ads towards the dems. In all seriousness, the dems have two years to do something meaningful and the rudderless GOP will do whatever they can to keep Biden and the dems from being successful. A majority of them cannot even admit that Biden is even the president and they are letting some Qanon antisemite become the face of their party. Who are the dems supposed to even negotiate with? McCarthy went to Maralago twice already to show his fealty to Trump. None of them except for Kinzinger and Romney have even remotely taken a stand against the party nutters. Will impeachment be successful? Probably not. Until the GOP can fully and publicly admit that Biden won the election fairly, at the very minimum, I don't even know where good faith negotiations start.
Maybe they shouldn’t start. Maybe the Democrats should go about their way of taking advantage of having both houses, pass some logical policies, undo all of Trump’s bullshit so he basically didn’t exist, and tell the Republicans to go fuck themselves. They’re not trying to cooperate, they’re not admitting Biden is president, so fuck them. Make them sit in the corner and cry until they learn that treason is not patriotism. As of right now, the Democrats are NOT the problem. And the GOP certainly do not deserve to have a say in shit as long as turds like Boebert and Marjorie-Terry Shiavo are still floating around.
I agree but Dems are bad at leading. Remember, the last election was a referendum on Trump, not the GOP as a whole. They gained house seats and narrowly lost the senate because Stacy Abrams did a bang up job registering voters in Georgia. If Schumer doesn’t start acting like a leader instead of a whiny pussy, the midterms will be a blood bath for the Dems in 2022. And then Biden basically becomes a 2 year lame duck. The Dems need to force through legislation that actually helps most Americans. No one gives a shit about Harriet Tubman on the $20. No one cares about performative diversity to make the administration super inclusive. I mean, I’m glad they did it, but if they just stick to lazy centrist positions, all those people who showed up in 2020 to vote trump out will stay home in 2 years. Pass a public option for people to get healthcare.(M4A isn’t feasible in the immediate) Legalize weed. At the very least, make all student debt be at 0% if they don’t wipe it entirely. I’d be comfortable paying it back at 0% interest so I can draw it out over time without increasing the balance forever. Make student loan forgiveness programs more accessible. Shit, they could even give DC statehood if they had any real interest in holding power while also giving that whole city congressional representation. If they wait around for gop to negotiate in good faith, nothing will ever get done. Their whole game plan is to make Biden the least successful they can.
I don't know if "bad at leading" is a far assessment of the Democrats. They were certainly hamstrung by not realizing that Republicans were willing to grind everything to a halt rather then give Obama a single opportunity of lead. When Bush was in power 9/11 made it nearly impossible to be critical without facing irrational backlash from a traumatized population. And there was a war in Afganistan and another war in Iraq and both had no real exit strategy because "being at war" is a great way to side step criticism. Clinton I think was a good leader, but I don't have proper political memories of his time in office beyond how it was clearly criminal offence to get a blowjob. I think that Democrats were caught flatfooted by how quickly the Republicans shifted from a collaborative agency to a combative agency. And I still worry that the Democrats will crumple under calls for "unity" and "healing" rather then fighting at the level of the Republicans. But is has been eleven days and I know that it takes time to bring consequences to the guilty. And I know that as desirable as a fast set of blanket consequences feel they are the exact wrong reaction to have at this time.
This was my point way back when. If you take this approach - which is 100% correct if it’s, say, a thousand crazies misbehaving - it fails to acknowledge that you’re shutting out seventy million people. So the question is, if they revolt are you comfortable with civil war? Or a military coup? Or succession? If the idea is “fuck those assholes,” have you made peace with the fact that the country is destroyed?
It's not a criminal offense to get a blowjob. It's a criminal offense to lie under oath. Whether or not the Starr investigation should have gone beyond investigating the corruption surrounding Whitewater is a different story.
How does one reach across the isle with open arms to comfort the hurt feefees of people who cannot to this day admit that the election was fair and who are allowing absolute crackpots to become the face of their party? Republicans have to come to the table with something not insane and in as good faith as they can muster. It’s not like the Dems are asking for the world. I’m not talking about the stimulus plan either. Just for the gop to try in some way to quench the fire they started. By allowing election-related conspiracy theories to grow legs and start walking for over 2 months after the election ended is what caused this insurrection to occur. It’s not the Dems who are openly threatening the foundations of democracy here.
I thought your point way back when was that BLM protests somehow partially responsible for Jan 6th because next year's police budgets might get cut? Or is it that shutting out tRump supporters is somehow different then shutting out Clinton supporters? Because what I am hearing from you is that when the Democrats might do something it is unfair to the Republicans because they are the only ones allowed to act like Republicans. Telling someone to wash off the shit that they have been rolling around in before they can come inside to play isn't shutting someone out. It is establishing reasonable boundaries. 74,212,722 people voted for tRump and everything he stands for and now they are upset that they are being painted with his actions. Yet they refuse to stake steps to wash the paint off.
Wow, the filter between your eyeballs and your brain is really something. If the party currently in power - the Democrats, for this cycle - has the attitude of "fuck those assholes, they need to come to the table and straighten up and until then we'll do what we want," then the natural outcome of that will not be for the Republicans to clean house and compromise. It will double down on their crazy. In two years at the midterms, you could well see some of the power swing back to the GOP. And, in four years, if this schism hasn't in any way been healed, I worry that it's laid all the groundwork for something catastrophically bad. I'm trying to point out that if either or both sides think that the other party isn't even worth bringing to the table, the house will not stand. Something will break, and it will devolve. Either the country could fracture, and you'd have "new" countries form a la the USSR, or you could have a(nother) coup that may this time be successful, or you could have all-out civil war. If it was civil war, the success of it would depend on what side the military chose and how that played out. I guess a better question is this: what is the end game? Push the Democrat legislation through, regardless of what +70M people think and then...what? What does this look like in four years? What do you ultimately hope that the goal is?
One more point - yes, shutting out Trump supporters is different than shutting out Clinton supporters. Namely because Trump supporters have shown themselves to be excessively violent. There's a radicalization going on here, and I don't see any meaningful solution to stop it. I'm not sure HOW you would stop it, but it needs to be addressed and ideally RFN. Clinton supporters donned pussy hats and marched peacefully across all 50 states weeks after Trump won. Trump supporters goddamn near lynched the SITTING VICE PRESIDENT OF THEIR OWN PARTY while he was rubber stamping the election results. You're dealing with an entirely different kettle of fish, and if you think looking down your nose and being disdainful and constantly typing "tRump" is in any way effective, boy, are things going to get worse before they get better.
Yes, push it through like Trump pushed through bullshit tariffs, travel bans, encouraged police brutality, anti-environment idiocy and separating children from families. And now that they have both houses, they can tell McConnell to fuck off and get some actual work done. Clinton was the last President to do this, and that was the last time the Western economy wasn’t fucking garbage. The Democrats have learned while Obama was president that the while McConnell is (unfortunately) still alive Republicans will not cooperate with them about ANYTHING to do with passing laws and legislation. We just were talking the other day the That the Republican party tried AS HARD AS THEY COULD to block aide to 9/11 responders. Answer me this: why do these pieces of shit deserve an olive branch when all they do is intentionally screw up their own country to line their pockets? The GOP have four years to sit down and think about what they did, and how they can improve. I certainly didn’t hear anything about cooperation when Trump became president. It was literally the exact opposite. This “Let’s not be like them” attitude the Democrats have carried for over two decades has been a colossal failure and hasn’t gotten anything done. Even now, they don’t want to impeach Trump. They don’t speak out against the traitorous freshman female retards in congress. They won’t suspend Cruz. They won’t do anything decent whatsoever to improve their image. So... I guess they’re in time-out.
If you put it that way it sounds to me like seventy million people need to be put on a watch list. If they want to bring change specifically through violence, there’s only one word to label Them with, and it isn’t “patriot”.
I slightly disagree. I think so much of the political shitshow will only matter again in November 2022, and by that time many of Trump's fervent supporters will have lost interest. They will realize, either through reality or lack of engagement in the warped fantasy they exist in, that there is no interest in politically representing them...It's why there's no Dixiecrat party anymore. So much of the machine that brought Trump, Cruz, Hawley, MTG etc. to the forefront will have moved on, lost interest or stalled. They will, through a variety of disgust, become disillusioned with the entire endeavor, and many of them will resign themselves to disengage. That means the remaining actors are more dangerous, but politically, not enough to get elected, and that is damned poisonous. I know they just have to get to the primary, but I think you'll see the party apparatus doing a better job of eliminating this, because it's toxic. The writing on the wall, left by the 6th is that this isn't idle internet conjecture: these people actually sought to dismantle and overthrow the US government. This means they are enemies of the state, and the entire defense and security apparatus is now cognizant of that fact. We now have an administration that listens to the intelligence briefings, emphasizes rule of law, and will not dog whistle encourage these people. You don't think the party chairs won't listen when the FBI says "nope, this crackpot is on a watchlist." when the President is getting the same briefings? Also, following the money: who's donating to the people who supported overthrowing the fucking government? MyPillow? How will these folks continue to fund raise? Who's paying for them to campaign on this lunacy? Again, Aunt Jemima isn't donating to the Dixiecrat party anymore, because there's no return on that investment. The main reason to support the GOP was pro-business, deregulation and lower taxes. In this environment, that investment has much longer odds: most of the lobbyists I know are working on crafting tax loopholes for their clients, rather than wholesale tax reductions. They KNOW a few trillion dollars in debt will result in higher taxes, and there's few reasons to lobby for a wholesale reduction, considering the downside. In the supporter's eyes, Trump is an American dream. He won't be permitted to run in 2024 by a bunch of technical obstacles laid by bureaucrats. "Well, who do they want me to vote for if not Trump? Well, FUCK them and that guy, I'm not voting for any of them." At best, they write-in Trump. The Democrats are a terrible political party, and truly don't have much to run on. And right now, the faith in government in both parties is pretty low. So, right now there's just little reason to have any confidence at all. That feeling allowed Trump to complete his takeover of the GOP in 2016, and I am somewhat confident both parties have higher guards now against that happening again. It's one of the reasons Biden won: centrist, not a wild swing to the opposite side (a la Sanders). I (sigh) agree with Crown: the GOP has simply indicated it's not going to collaborate in good faith in any real sense. So, the Democrats will legislate by brute force, over and over again, only really collaborating on the impeachment, ethics committees and resolutions to censure the (ahem) ELECTED OFFICIALS WHO DIDN'T RECOGNIZE THE VALIDITY OF THE ELECTION. That's like me tugging on my dick and questioning was I born a dude: you might not like it, but facts are fucking facts. Lastly, I am starting to think impeaching Trump is a slippery slope. The GOP will fight this tooth and nail, not because it's the right thing to do (laugh/cry), but because if Trump's guilty, then Hawley, Cruz and a handful of others are just as culpable, and if the impeachment is a success....guess who's next...and now you have legitimately elected representatives being shown the door, which...
I'm not suggesting that the Republicans get an olive branch or that "unity" is the way to go. Far from it. I'm saying that one side is corrupted and radicalized to the point that the highest echelons of leadership are compromised. The focus should be on weeding out the cancer, trying to reverse some of the damaged that's occurred with the "normal" people in the party and easing up on legislation until it appears that the other side may once again be playing with a full deck. If the plan is to march forward with a democratic agenda, and fuck the other side, and let the Republicans sort themselves out, then I think in four years whoever they cough up will make Trump look as reasonable as Trump made Bush Jr. look in retrospect. It's a mistake to focus on moving things forward right now until somehow the dangerous faction of the party gets addressed and somehow - I don't know how - made to see common sense again.
I think this misunderstands what the Dems agenda looks like. They don’t have a real interest in retributive policies designed to hurt people. But again, the gop needs to make that known. They can negotiate various policies without calling the Dems radical leftist socialists or whatever.
I know that you are trying to imply that I'm an idiot because I don't agree with your arguments. I'll try to explain my point so that you can understand me. The millions of people who voted for tRump are not one single block of people. The millions of people who voted for tRump are not all invested in overthrowing the American government. The Republican party is pushing a narrative that an attack on individual members of their party is an attack on everyone who identifies with that party. The Republican party is arguing that since not all of its members tried to overthrow the government that individual members of the Republican party should not face the consequences of their actions. When you say that the millions of people who voted for tRump are feeling disenfranchised and that it is the responsibility of the Democrats to make sure that they feel enfranchised you are feeding into the Republican narrative that for "unity and healing" to occur that consequences cannot occur. Now pay attention because this is the important part. Republicans as individuals are responsible for the actions of Republicans as a group. Either the actions of individuals in the party runs counter to the values of the Republican Party or those actions are the values of the Republican Party. The people in America should treat the groups who support insurrection, terrorism and the destruction of their country like traitors. You keep talking about the 74 million tRump voters like they are some protected class of people, but you ignore that there are 330 million people in America of which 256 million did not support tRump. The Democrats owe Republicans nothing. The Republicans are entitled to nothing. The Republicans need to show that they are worth working with. The individuals in the Republican party need to force the people who hold power in their party to hold Republican members accountable. Otherwise individuals will hold the Republican party accountable for its members actions because there is no way to look into a group and remove the traitors, terrorists and insurrectionists. Pay attention to this last part its extra super important. The culture of the Republican party is one that breeds terrorism and extremism. Unless the culture of the party changes it will continue to generate terrorists and extremists. Everyone in the world saw the outcome of the Republican Party culture on the 6th and they are waiting for a reason to trust the Republican party. The Republican party broke the covenant that society is built on. They broke trust. It takes work to build trust once it has been broken. If the Republicans don't fix themselves then the endgame is that they can't be given power and their followers will have to find new ways to engage with the system to feel like they are being represented.