Democratic Senator Michael Bennet says GOP colleagues have privately confessed that the now-dead immigration deal was the toughest one they’d ever get.
And here I thought Democrats even participating in a BS, “bipartisan” bill that only served to validate the xenophobia being put forth by the opposing party was appalling and a clear example of the utter failure they represent.
Then again, illegals is common vernacular now, so what the fuck do I even know, really.
I’ve voted for Dems my entire life, but you’ll never catch me saying they “do their jobs”. The party embarrasses me at nearly every opportunity; any support I have for/give to the party is despite its leadership, not because of it.
When politics function correctly, that is what they are supposed to do in order to get concessions on other important things. Compromise leaves everyone unsatisfied.
Compromise is supposed to come with consessions from BOTH sides, not just handing one side everything they actually want after they make an unreasonable request…
That’s what the democrats were trying to do. Republicans tied funding for Ukraine and some other things to tightening border security. The democrats called their bluff. They said “Here’s a border security bill that does what you’ve been asking for now let’s get this all done”. Republicans’ made surprised Pikachu face and said “We didn’t want it this way! We want it done by OUR president so he gets credit!” So, even though the Democrats were giving the Republicans what they’ve been asking for in exchange for things the Democrats wanted, the Republicans said “no”.
“That’s what they were doing! Republicans made a dishonest and completely unneccessary move, and Democrats compromised with that unreasonable position!”
Yes… exactly. Democrats GIVE IN TO BAD FAITH DEMANDS. That is NOT negotiating. That is capitulating.
I don’t think you really read my comment. Here’s my summation of how the back and forth went:
Dems: We want funding for Ukraine.
Reps: We want border security. No funding for Ukraine without border security!
Dems: Okay! Let’s do both!
Reps: Wait! We didn’t really mean it!
The Dems called the Reps bluff and the Reps backed out. The Dems were getting something they wanted in the deal, too. Plus, Dems seem to be warming to the idea of border security more recently so they’re not exactly getting nothing from that part either.
That doesn’t sound like giving in to bad faith demands. That sounds like negotiating. It’s just that the Reps aren’t actually interested in negotiating and flipped the table over even though they were getting a pretty good deal. It shows the Reps as the selfish babies that they are while the Dems show willingness to actually get things done.
Why do the Democrats let Republicans write their job description? They should negotiate, not capitulate. I know that’s a difficult distinction these days given how much of the latter has been going on, but wake up and realize the difference.
You are beyond pathetic if you think I support Republicans.
I’m pointing out that Democrats CONSTANTLY allow the Overton window to move to the right. They do these “compromises” that only offer legitimacy to the OUTRIGHT LIES of Republicans.
Democrats are the useful idiots, and you morons are here seal-clapping as the Dems give creedence to the Republican version of “border crisis”.
There is no border crisis. Not a NEW one, anyways… and now you have Democrats screaming, “give me the power, I’ll shut down the border today!”
You all are pathetic for failing to see who the actual useful idios are.
Please explain your grand strategy for passing meaningful legislation while the GOP controls a house of Congress. How exactly do Democrats pass aid to Ukraine?
You know how you move the Overton window back? Remove conservatives from Congress. You do that by winning elections. And you don’t do that by SOLEY denigrating the only party we can actually capture and use to our advantage. You aren’t helping the cause you supposedly support. You’re just doing damage, not offering a single workable alternative solution, and throwing a temper tantrum. Saying “Democrats bad” over and over, while again not offering any real criticism of the GOP or a better solution, is precisely what a Republican would do.
Moderates control the party because they made specific strategic decisions to capture, grow, and maintain that power over many elections. We have to do the EXACT. SAME. THING. If you aren’t willing to support that, just admit you’d rather have moderates or conservatives in charge.
Ahh yes, the classic, “please present a perfect solution if you want to complain about something.”
Pathetic is the correct word for you. Stop making excuses for people that aren’t even trying. You talk as if Republicans have all the power… and they do. Because Democrats fundamentally do not know how to use it.
Keep cheering on losers, though. It seems to be what this country loves on both sides of the aisle…
Nobody is disagreeing because nobody wants to interact with the guy who immediately replies to every comment in the thread, especially when it’s a 12 year old that just learned a new word.
Good job yet again bringing zero point or opinion in to the conversation. Pathetic. You get upset and completely lose the topic… At least I’m upset because powerful people are failing at their jobs, not because some rando hurt my feefees.
Oh yeah, they should do what the Republicans are doing and use a scorched earth, no compromise strategy! I mean, geez, look at all these huge legislative wins accomplished by this congress using this strategy. Maybe we can even have a cool purity-test driven speaker role, that’s been working well for them! Anything else we should imitate that I’m forgetting? A demagogic, unrestrained president would definitely tie things up nicely.
Okay I’ll stop being a sarcastic jerk now, but you get the point. This strategy from Republicans works wonders when it comes to obstructing and shutting things down, but you’re never going to build anything with it. It’s destructive at its core.
Sometimes, yep. A small handful of decades ago, “the people” would have wanted gay marriage banned forever. Before that, interracial marriage. Before that, women’s suffrage. I want a system that enacts good, just law in a stable manner and while I always think democracy should be a part of any system I would be a part of, pure democracy has no effective way of ensuring minority rights.
That’s answering your question in the abstract. For this situation specifically, of course I want democratic, progressive legislation passed. In fact, I want to maximize the amount of democratic progress over the longest period of time, to the point where I’m willing to take losses on smaller items for the bigger picture.
Notice how I am distinctly not asking for Democrats to become as obstructionist. I’m saying they should act like adults dealing with unreasonable people.
If you act as if you have leverage you don’t and refuse to engage with those who have power, your only choice is obstruction. This is what the Republicans are learning right this moment. Now, lucky for them, obstruction happens to coincide pretty well with their political objectives. For anything “constructive” though, they fail time and time again because none of them know how to compromise.
Politics is compromising with factions to achieve your goals. I loathe some of the things we have to compromise on, but these people exist and they will have representation in our government for as long as they do.
They do not deserve representatives that cannot uphold their oath of office just because they also think that way
We do not let murderers write the laws on murder, yet people CONSTANTLY excuse Congress for being illegally vile…
What the fuck is wrong with everyone? Neither party’s behavior is acceptable REGARDLESS of how large the gulf between them is.
Note how I have never once said to not vote for dems over repubs. I just want people to realize you are not working with quality. You CANNOT expect dems to do the right thing on their own. Ever. They require constant pressure to the left, or they DO get dragged to the right.
This played out in real time and people EXCUSE the risk. The risk vs reward is pathetically small for gheir gamble. This was NOT a smart move even IF it worked out, and it’s literal insanity to sit here and listen to buffoons defend a terrible decision that moves the Overton window to rhe right.
Yet again, people are cheering the Dems allowing the Overton window to slip to the right… Pathetic. Beyond pathetic. It will be the death of this country.
You talk about “acceptable” and “deserving” but you have to realize that power is the only thing that matters in the end. They get power, they enact their whims. They don’t, they can’t. Right now, they have it, so you have to negotiate. That’s it, that’s just how it works.
People who complain about the Overton window are wasting their time. You don’t get to control that. Focus on winning what is possible with the window you have to work in. Expand that window if and when you can. Refusing to participate until the window looks like what you want it to is just ineffective.
And I just don’t agree with your characterization of the dems. I have my problems with their direction or actions at times, but they’ve fought and won for my rights and for the rights of various others in my lifetime. I do consider the more leftist parts of the party to be allies, but I’m not willing to give complete credit for those victories to only that wing of the party. I think it’s really disingenuous to look at the victories won for LGBT rights, climate change, and healthcare in the last 20 years (incomplete as they may be), and just write off the work done by democrats to achieve those.
The last time they had a majority (first mandate of Obama if I recall?) they tried to work with the Republicans in good faith and they got nowhere so fast that the public voted them out from dissatisfaction.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s how I remember it.
It was a one person majority in the Senate that only lasted for a brief amount of time and was gone once healthcare reform ate up all of the time before Ted Kennedy died. They basically took what Mitt Romney had done at the state level and applied it federally, which is what Republicans claimed to want before they decided to call it Obamacare and pretend they didn’t help craft it.
The health care bill contained a series of things that are broadly popular when they were laid out individually. Package them together and call it “Obamacare” in the media and it was suddenly unpopular.
Tea Party astroturfing can’t be understated, either. The GOP grabbed back power at just the right time to be able to gerrymander districts and then keep them gerrymandered up until now. We’re only beginning to erode that back.
Only until the instant the Senate takes a simple majority vote to lower it to 50.
While the Senate has historically been a useful bulwark for pushing back against the creeping fascism of the GOP, it’s also a matter of fact that it is an antidemocratic institution that in the longer term we’re better off minimizing or eliminating. It’s the House of Lords and we do not need a House of Lords in the modern era.
Though I would like to see proper reapportionment in the House of Reps first, including adding significantly more members.
The argument works for the House of Lords, which has often acted as a moderating force (and loses power every time it does), despite its antidemocratic nature.
I think it’s a non-starter for the Senate. It was deliberately constructed as a conservative brake on Congress, being heavily weighted to smaller (more rural) states which tend to be more conservative. True conservatism is obviously opposed to fascism but in practice, it isn’t (and neither is liberalism if it is feeling threatened by socialism).
I commented this a while back, and I believe it wholeheartedly -
The current U.S. system is set up so that only two political parties can exist. In a perfect world, they would be rational, and represent differing facets of the voters values/goals. But in addition to not having a perfect world, through manipulation, degradation of the laws, and just human error/unintended consequences, we’ve wound up with a system where the two parties in power are largely funded by corporations, or those who have the resources to create PACs and launder their money into politics, and those groups represent roughly the same values and political goals.
So the political ‘game’ now is to acquire money to campaign (so you can get the votes) by appeasing the donors while appearing to do things that attract voters, because voting has not quite been manipulated to the point where money equals votes, yet. (Save for gerrymandering, which renders the voting ‘problem’ moot.)
I now believe politics is largely theatrical, and the media, also controlled by the interests that fund the political campaigns of politicians that do their bidding, works very hard to keep folks divided and arguing, rather than facing the real problem of their systemic disempowerment.
I am increasingly disillusioned that a solution to this problem is possible.
The GOP had a sign that said “we are domestic terrorists.” Can we stop caring what these radicalized disruptors think? Anyone who claims to be a moderate at this point is not welcome in my house none the less would I want to be on the same side as them.
Lol, it’s not the GOP base that the soundbite would be used against. It’s the dem base, the people who open the new york times homepage on the way to do their wordle every morning that would see the headline 'DEMS SAY GOP DESTRUCTION AT HAND, “TOTAL ONE PARTY DOMINATION IF WE PLAY OUR CARDS RIGHT” ’ that would gasp and be so rattled they forgot the word for Sunday in their Spanish Duolingo lesson.
They say this because their lobbyists want nothing to change and if the Republicans are too weak, Democrats may actually have to make peoples lives better or the whole charade falls apart.
For better or worse we have a two dominant party system, which totally breaks down when one party decides to go it alone and only advance causes they can win with their votes.
That is a weak party, so divided internally they don’t dare compromise externally.
If we don’t have at LEAST two functional parties, it all falls apart.
I’m not arguing with that, but it’s the system we have. We can modify it, improve upon it, or let it completely fall apart and be replaced with One Party Rule.
In two ways. They also killed the chances of further good deals. When they aren’t in power why would democrats ever want to negotiate with them
Because democrats are willing to do their jobs.
And here I thought Democrats even participating in a BS, “bipartisan” bill that only served to validate the xenophobia being put forth by the opposing party was appalling and a clear example of the utter failure they represent.
Then again, illegals is common vernacular now, so what the fuck do I even know, really.
I’ve voted for Dems my entire life, but you’ll never catch me saying they “do their jobs”. The party embarrasses me at nearly every opportunity; any support I have for/give to the party is despite its leadership, not because of it.
Willing, and capable are different. They are politicians after all.
Rolling over for republicans is in their job description?!
… that explains a few things…
When politics function correctly, that is what they are supposed to do in order to get concessions on other important things. Compromise leaves everyone unsatisfied.
Compromise is supposed to come with consessions from BOTH sides, not just handing one side everything they actually want after they make an unreasonable request…
That’s capitulation, not negotiation.
That’s what the democrats were trying to do. Republicans tied funding for Ukraine and some other things to tightening border security. The democrats called their bluff. They said “Here’s a border security bill that does what you’ve been asking for now let’s get this all done”. Republicans’ made surprised Pikachu face and said “We didn’t want it this way! We want it done by OUR president so he gets credit!” So, even though the Democrats were giving the Republicans what they’ve been asking for in exchange for things the Democrats wanted, the Republicans said “no”.
Republicans never argue in good faith, and they always put power and politics over policy.
“That’s what they were doing! Republicans made a dishonest and completely unneccessary move, and Democrats compromised with that unreasonable position!”
Yes… exactly. Democrats GIVE IN TO BAD FAITH DEMANDS. That is NOT negotiating. That is capitulating.
I don’t think you really read my comment. Here’s my summation of how the back and forth went:
The Dems called the Reps bluff and the Reps backed out. The Dems were getting something they wanted in the deal, too. Plus, Dems seem to be warming to the idea of border security more recently so they’re not exactly getting nothing from that part either.
That doesn’t sound like giving in to bad faith demands. That sounds like negotiating. It’s just that the Reps aren’t actually interested in negotiating and flipped the table over even though they were getting a pretty good deal. It shows the Reps as the selfish babies that they are while the Dems show willingness to actually get things done.
No, but Republicans convincing you it is, is the primary requirement in a Republican’s job description.
Why do the Democrats let Republicans write their job description? They should negotiate, not capitulate. I know that’s a difficult distinction these days given how much of the latter has been going on, but wake up and realize the difference.
They don’t. You are letting Republicans write it and dismissing reality. You are their tool. A useful idiot. The poorly educated.
You are beyond pathetic if you think I support Republicans.
I’m pointing out that Democrats CONSTANTLY allow the Overton window to move to the right. They do these “compromises” that only offer legitimacy to the OUTRIGHT LIES of Republicans.
Democrats are the useful idiots, and you morons are here seal-clapping as the Dems give creedence to the Republican version of “border crisis”.
There is no border crisis. Not a NEW one, anyways… and now you have Democrats screaming, “give me the power, I’ll shut down the border today!”
You all are pathetic for failing to see who the actual useful idios are.
Please explain your grand strategy for passing meaningful legislation while the GOP controls a house of Congress. How exactly do Democrats pass aid to Ukraine?
You know how you move the Overton window back? Remove conservatives from Congress. You do that by winning elections. And you don’t do that by SOLEY denigrating the only party we can actually capture and use to our advantage. You aren’t helping the cause you supposedly support. You’re just doing damage, not offering a single workable alternative solution, and throwing a temper tantrum. Saying “Democrats bad” over and over, while again not offering any real criticism of the GOP or a better solution, is precisely what a Republican would do.
Moderates control the party because they made specific strategic decisions to capture, grow, and maintain that power over many elections. We have to do the EXACT. SAME. THING. If you aren’t willing to support that, just admit you’d rather have moderates or conservatives in charge.
Ahh yes, the classic, “please present a perfect solution if you want to complain about something.”
Pathetic is the correct word for you. Stop making excuses for people that aren’t even trying. You talk as if Republicans have all the power… and they do. Because Democrats fundamentally do not know how to use it.
Keep cheering on losers, though. It seems to be what this country loves on both sides of the aisle…
Did you just learn the word capitulate or something?
You’re suffocating all the discussion in this thread by making that “point” to anyone who replies.
Notice how no one is disagreeing with an actual point that means anything against what I said. Including yours. Good job failing to listen or think.
Nobody is disagreeing because nobody wants to interact with the guy who immediately replies to every comment in the thread, especially when it’s a 12 year old that just learned a new word.
Good job yet again bringing zero point or opinion in to the conversation. Pathetic. You get upset and completely lose the topic… At least I’m upset because powerful people are failing at their jobs, not because some rando hurt my feefees.
Oh yeah, they should do what the Republicans are doing and use a scorched earth, no compromise strategy! I mean, geez, look at all these huge legislative wins accomplished by this congress using this strategy. Maybe we can even have a cool purity-test driven speaker role, that’s been working well for them! Anything else we should imitate that I’m forgetting? A demagogic, unrestrained president would definitely tie things up nicely.
Okay I’ll stop being a sarcastic jerk now, but you get the point. This strategy from Republicans works wonders when it comes to obstructing and shutting things down, but you’re never going to build anything with it. It’s destructive at its core.
Do you think its a bad strategy for taking action that the people actually want?
Sometimes, yep. A small handful of decades ago, “the people” would have wanted gay marriage banned forever. Before that, interracial marriage. Before that, women’s suffrage. I want a system that enacts good, just law in a stable manner and while I always think democracy should be a part of any system I would be a part of, pure democracy has no effective way of ensuring minority rights.
That’s answering your question in the abstract. For this situation specifically, of course I want democratic, progressive legislation passed. In fact, I want to maximize the amount of democratic progress over the longest period of time, to the point where I’m willing to take losses on smaller items for the bigger picture.
Notice how I am distinctly not asking for Democrats to become as obstructionist. I’m saying they should act like adults dealing with unreasonable people.
If you act as if you have leverage you don’t and refuse to engage with those who have power, your only choice is obstruction. This is what the Republicans are learning right this moment. Now, lucky for them, obstruction happens to coincide pretty well with their political objectives. For anything “constructive” though, they fail time and time again because none of them know how to compromise.
Politics is compromising with factions to achieve your goals. I loathe some of the things we have to compromise on, but these people exist and they will have representation in our government for as long as they do.
They do not deserve representatives that cannot uphold their oath of office just because they also think that way
We do not let murderers write the laws on murder, yet people CONSTANTLY excuse Congress for being illegally vile…
What the fuck is wrong with everyone? Neither party’s behavior is acceptable REGARDLESS of how large the gulf between them is.
Note how I have never once said to not vote for dems over repubs. I just want people to realize you are not working with quality. You CANNOT expect dems to do the right thing on their own. Ever. They require constant pressure to the left, or they DO get dragged to the right.
This played out in real time and people EXCUSE the risk. The risk vs reward is pathetically small for gheir gamble. This was NOT a smart move even IF it worked out, and it’s literal insanity to sit here and listen to buffoons defend a terrible decision that moves the Overton window to rhe right.
Yet again, people are cheering the Dems allowing the Overton window to slip to the right… Pathetic. Beyond pathetic. It will be the death of this country.
You talk about “acceptable” and “deserving” but you have to realize that power is the only thing that matters in the end. They get power, they enact their whims. They don’t, they can’t. Right now, they have it, so you have to negotiate. That’s it, that’s just how it works.
People who complain about the Overton window are wasting their time. You don’t get to control that. Focus on winning what is possible with the window you have to work in. Expand that window if and when you can. Refusing to participate until the window looks like what you want it to is just ineffective.
And I just don’t agree with your characterization of the dems. I have my problems with their direction or actions at times, but they’ve fought and won for my rights and for the rights of various others in my lifetime. I do consider the more leftist parts of the party to be allies, but I’m not willing to give complete credit for those victories to only that wing of the party. I think it’s really disingenuous to look at the victories won for LGBT rights, climate change, and healthcare in the last 20 years (incomplete as they may be), and just write off the work done by democrats to achieve those.
No, that’s the thing… we DO control the Overton window. Demovrats could easily stand their ground and keep it somewhere. They choose not to.
How much leftist progress came about because of Bernie and AOC simply being a voice of the left??
This shit matters, and Democrats CONSTANTLY shirk responsibility.
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The last time they had a majority (first mandate of Obama if I recall?) they tried to work with the Republicans in good faith and they got nowhere so fast that the public voted them out from dissatisfaction.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s how I remember it.
It was a one person majority in the Senate that only lasted for a brief amount of time and was gone once healthcare reform ate up all of the time before Ted Kennedy died. They basically took what Mitt Romney had done at the state level and applied it federally, which is what Republicans claimed to want before they decided to call it Obamacare and pretend they didn’t help craft it.
The health care bill contained a series of things that are broadly popular when they were laid out individually. Package them together and call it “Obamacare” in the media and it was suddenly unpopular.
Tea Party astroturfing can’t be understated, either. The GOP grabbed back power at just the right time to be able to gerrymander districts and then keep them gerrymandered up until now. We’re only beginning to erode that back.
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Because you need 60 votes to do anything in the Senate.
Only until the instant the Senate takes a simple majority vote to lower it to 50.
While the Senate has historically been a useful bulwark for pushing back against the creeping fascism of the GOP, it’s also a matter of fact that it is an antidemocratic institution that in the longer term we’re better off minimizing or eliminating. It’s the House of Lords and we do not need a House of Lords in the modern era.
Though I would like to see proper reapportionment in the House of Reps first, including adding significantly more members.
Has it?
Maybe. Maybe not. I won’t come to the defense of that, it was more of a hedge.
The argument works for the House of Lords, which has often acted as a moderating force (and loses power every time it does), despite its antidemocratic nature.
I think it’s a non-starter for the Senate. It was deliberately constructed as a conservative brake on Congress, being heavily weighted to smaller (more rural) states which tend to be more conservative. True conservatism is obviously opposed to fascism but in practice, it isn’t (and neither is liberalism if it is feeling threatened by socialism).
But muh states rights!
Because corporate dems are basically republicans. Our whole political system is right of center. With a few outliers.
I commented this a while back, and I believe it wholeheartedly -
The current U.S. system is set up so that only two political parties can exist. In a perfect world, they would be rational, and represent differing facets of the voters values/goals. But in addition to not having a perfect world, through manipulation, degradation of the laws, and just human error/unintended consequences, we’ve wound up with a system where the two parties in power are largely funded by corporations, or those who have the resources to create PACs and launder their money into politics, and those groups represent roughly the same values and political goals.
So the political ‘game’ now is to acquire money to campaign (so you can get the votes) by appeasing the donors while appearing to do things that attract voters, because voting has not quite been manipulated to the point where money equals votes, yet. (Save for gerrymandering, which renders the voting ‘problem’ moot.)
I now believe politics is largely theatrical, and the media, also controlled by the interests that fund the political campaigns of politicians that do their bidding, works very hard to keep folks divided and arguing, rather than facing the real problem of their systemic disempowerment.
I am increasingly disillusioned that a solution to this problem is possible.
But anyway - I guess I’m saying I agree with you.
Have you ever listened to Democrats? The leadership keeps saying that they believe we need a strong Republican Party for some reason.
Imagine the soundbites if they said they wanted to destroy the opposition party.
GOP talking heads say the same thing all the time
The difference between the GOP base and the Dem base.
The GOP had a sign that said “we are domestic terrorists.” Can we stop caring what these radicalized disruptors think? Anyone who claims to be a moderate at this point is not welcome in my house none the less would I want to be on the same side as them.
Lol, it’s not the GOP base that the soundbite would be used against. It’s the dem base, the people who open the new york times homepage on the way to do their wordle every morning that would see the headline 'DEMS SAY GOP DESTRUCTION AT HAND, “TOTAL ONE PARTY DOMINATION IF WE PLAY OUR CARDS RIGHT” ’ that would gasp and be so rattled they forgot the word for Sunday in their Spanish Duolingo lesson.
They say this because their lobbyists want nothing to change and if the Republicans are too weak, Democrats may actually have to make peoples lives better or the whole charade falls apart.
For better or worse we have a two dominant party system, which totally breaks down when one party decides to go it alone and only advance causes they can win with their votes.
That is a weak party, so divided internally they don’t dare compromise externally.
If we don’t have at LEAST two functional parties, it all falls apart.
That sounds like an utterly stupid system that is fragile and easily manipulated… Go figure it’s ours…
I’m not arguing with that, but it’s the system we have. We can modify it, improve upon it, or let it completely fall apart and be replaced with One Party Rule.
For the sheer joy of capitulation.
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