this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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Communism
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What happened is that the Dems have had control of all 3 (house of reps, senate, presidency) for 6 of the last 44 years. That's right, 6 years out of the last 44 fucking years. If you want filibuster proof control, then it's 4 months of the last 44 years. Not 4 years, 4 MONTHS out of the last 44 fucking years. When they don't have control of all 3, they have to reach across the aisle to get anything done.
Want progress? Give Dems consistent and overwhelming victories.
I actually think the level of progress Biden has been able to make domestically in the last few years is a good counter argument to this. Surely the communists will not agree with me on this, but he did a FUCK of a lot even with an explicitly rabidly hostile congress.
If Obama had ordered the forgiveness of half a trillion dollars in student loan debt, would the Supreme Court at the time have shot him down? I honestly think not.
If Obama had staffed the NLRB with actual labor people, would all these union gains have started happening 16 years ago?
Etc etc. Congress is another story, but you can even do big stuff like ACA or the climate bill even if you gotta water it down sometimes to get it through. I definitely won’t say you are wrong that the Republicans are the main danger and obstacle and voting for Democrats is a way to make things better (or, in this election, not end the world). But also, I think if you gave Clinton or Pelosi a magic fuckin wand they wouldn’t have really done anything about the neoliberal hellscape, because that’s not a priority to them or their stock portfolio or their campaign contributors or their consultants.
I get what you mean and I don’t fully disagree, but also there’s a huge (majority) corporate wing of the Democrats that I do not think should be provided with any kind of free pass.
How the hell is Biden a counter argument? He had control of all three houses for 2 years and he got great things done. When Dems get control, they get great things done. Now that he doesn't have the house of representatives, aid to Ukraine gets delayed, he has to do executive action for military alliance with Ukraine. He's hamstrung and it's limping along because he does not have the House of Representatives.
The ACA only passed when Obama had control of all three and a supermajority. After that GOP was more than happy to block everything.
Also. Check this out; I never fully realized this:
So, after the civil war it was pretty much all Republicans all the time (i.e. boo racism yay rich people), and then the whole country collapsed after a while, and they brought in FDR and started hating on the rich people and it became yay racism boo rich people Democrats all the time, and it wasn’t until the 1980s that it went to let’s do half and half, and spend all our time fighting each other.
I don’t quite know what to make of it, but I had not realized before that it was like that.
Think of it this way: progress came to a grinding halt with Reagan and the GOP since then.
Yeah pretty much. And the years that kicked off with FDR and ended with Reagan were not exactly lacking in progress being made.
Also, Democrats controlled both houses throughout the entire Vietnam War.
Hm
That's actually a really good point