US Politics, December 2024: The Worst Second Coming Ever

Let us pray.

I dunno. What about the Stone Roses?

Good afternoon!

I might just sit this month out

US Politics is no longer as interesting when you can't suspend disbelief

xp good afterdoom

*something garbled and vaguely academic about how unknowable reality actually is, with raised eyebrows and furtive hand gestures*

i am waiting for the tax records. which are definitive.

tick tick tick

As a public sector employee in WI this makes things feel a little brighter.

https://www.wsaw.com/2024/12/02/wisconsin-judge-restores-collective-bargaining-powers-public-employees/

Found Trump's first pardon opportunity

https://archive.ph/50pog#selection-1941.164-1941.177

The New Yorker is not happy about Hunter being pardoned

I really do need to see that My Son Hunter hit-piece schlockfest

I haven't seen such centrist rage since Biden pulled out of Afghanistan.

the huge attention and angst given to this story is absurd

Wasn't expecting that NYer piece to be written by Isaac Chotiner

What about the norms

“But Biden has once again forced Americans to ask whether he is acting in the national interest”

Short of some kinds of treason (not even all) I’m not sure I’d put any convictions in the “national interest” column.

the pardons stretch back 14 years or something. biden was protecting hunter from being targeted further by trump for burisma era allegations.

any father would do this. it's not moral but i get it. he wants to give hunter a chance to stay sober and live a decent life. not at all fair that hunter gets that chance and millions of others languishing in prison for lesser crimes don't, but it's how it is

people are still blabbing about Ford's preemptive pardon of Nixon, this will definitely affect his legacy

that said, I don't really give a shit and hope that he pardons more people

any father would do this. it's not moral but i get it. he wants to give hunter a chance to stay sober and live a decent life. not at all fair that hunter gets that chance and millions of others languishing in prison for lesser crimes don't, but it's how it is

― treeship., Monday, 2 December 2024 23:25 (thirteen minutes ago) link

Hunter Biden is 54. Jesus.

Bro has likely been committing financial crimes for decades. Everything about Hunter Biden is shady. Why are people so protective of this private equity fail son?

b/c the prosecution was a ridiculous political witch hunt by some of the absolute worst people alive, i think

He was targeted because he sucks. I can’t believe anyone outside of the r/neolib would be defending Burisma.

And, frankly, I think I prefer a dad who can admit his 50-something son sucks.

I'm a bit ambivalent.

On the one hand it's difficult to believe that feeble dem attempts to uphold the rule of law etc. matter that much in the trump era (e.g. I'm not sure that Biden pardoning Hunter meaningfully impacts how difficult/easy it will be for republicans to go along with trump's gleeful forthcoming pardon-spree).

On the other hand, we tend to hate and resent the imposition of hypocritical imposition of double standards only up to the point where everyone agrees there's no longer any point in pretending.

Yeah, mixed feelings. In general I hate the corruption in our system, and things like this just basically ratify and reaffirm it. On the other hand we just reelected the most obviously corrupt president in modern U.S. history, so it's hard for me to get too worked up about.

Biden’s legacy doesn’t matter anymore. The democratic party needs to be transformed into something else.

I'm not sure my diabetic film who gets way cheaper insulin will agree with you, treeship.

i didn't care about hunter biden before the pardon and I don't care after the pardon. putting him in jail or letting him off does absolutely nothing, either positive or negative, to anyone's life.

alfred, i am not dismissing the fact that democrats are better than republicans from a policy standpoint. but they lost EVERYTHING. trump controls both legislatures and he stocked the supreme court with loyalists. democrats can't protect people when they are out of power.

Well, Democrats tried the "we're better people than them" / they go low, we go high stuff. And failed utterly.

So maybe Biden is like fuck it, nothing matters, nothing to lose.

That’s definitely the vibes I’m getting.

“Tried to yank this turd back from the brink but she went over the edge. The grave beckons. Carry on my wayward son.”

If he’s really all “fuck it” he should pack the court and stuff

Not expecting any heroics from the vacating administration. They have all moved on to their assorted Plan B's.

I suspect this is as much a "fuck you" to the democrats for forcing him to bow out as to anyone else - it's joe and hunter against the world now.

If he’s really all “fuck it” he should pack the court and stuff

He can't do that alone. He'd need Congress to be all "fuck it" to the tune of majorities in both chambers. Sen. Wyden has a SCOTUS reform bill all waiting to move ahead, but nowhere near enough votes to move it.

I suspect this is as much a "fuck you" to the democrats for forcing him to bow out as to anyone else - it's joe and hunter against the world now.

Hunter will take his old man to a strip club to celebrate.

Let's all let our freak flags fly, it's Trumpworld now

It's not like politics was ever a pristine utopia of virtue, but common, man, the current level of sheer tacky crasssness is most definitely due to the Donald.

C'mon, man

Nothing in any society is perfect. American society was never even good. But things are capable of becoming very bad when there are no brakes, even minimal measures of partial accountability, like the necessity of keeping up appearances. So we’ll see

It does seem like at some level people were annoyed at the hypocrisy and just wanted mask-off gangsters as their government. Seems stupid to me but i think this is a real thought process

Why is there is treeship 2 and a treeship.?

branching off onto a new line

When i sign in on my phone this is the account that is saved. I don’t know the password for it though so when i use a computer i sign in as treeship.

i'm glad people are talking about the hunter pardon because it lets me know who gets it and who doesn't and those who spend more than a second thinking, contemplating it. . . don't get it. it's ok! You don't have to get everything

Ok thank you seemed a lil weird

Something's happening and you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Waterface

A flotilla of Treeships

Treeship 2 is for the Vice President

til: you can download Jenny Holzer's truism "abuse of power comes as no surprise" in the motivational quote format

So kash patel seems insane

“We will go out and find the conspirators,” he told Bannon, “not just in government but in the media — yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”

Not a normal one in the bunch

First they came for Morning Joe...

Biden should say fuck it and Free Mumia and Leonard Peltier and the immigrants in the camps. Pardons for everyone!

Biden saying fuck it means like sending Israel more bombs

Biden saying "fuck it" means dropping dead

Biden administration caught by surprise by South Korea developments

Joe keepin' it real until the end

This fucker absolutely should pardon Mumia and Leonard Peltier

sorry, Joe's already used up his controversial pardons

Exactly! That’s my problem. He could be pardoning Snowden instead of his dipshit private equity son for tax evasion. Stewart’s riffing on the Daily Show last night was very good on this point. Just insane Democratic centrism.

Eh, iirc, Trump had way more than just one single controversial pardon his first go-round. Ol' Joe can dash off some more at the 11th hour.

pardon every registered Democrat in the country

Isn’t Mumia in jail form Pennsylvania state crimes rather than federal?

Biden has no interest in pardoning Mumia or Peltier anyway

accepting a pardon is also a tacit admission of guilt, you can't pardon the innocent

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/03/media/fox-news-ignores-pete-hegseth-controversies/index.html

Surprise surprise, Fox News isn’t covering the many Hegseth controversies

Tim Walz, no longer cool

This is horrifying news and a terrible loss for the business and health care community in Minnesota.

Minnesota is sending our prayers to Brian’s family and the UnitedHealthcare team. https://t.co/6lAL2lJXzn

— Governor Tim Walz (@GovTimWalz) December 4, 2024

Guy was about as cool as Tim Kaine. He just used PG-13 language on occasion and coached football

You knew Thompson?

C'mon, he had to say something. The guy lived in Minnesota.

I saw the security footage. Guy in a black hoodie walked up behind him with a silenced pistol in the middle of the street. That was an assassination straight out of a Netflix show.

And then escaped into Central Park on a Citibike, reportedly.

burnt offerings for the neoliberal god

s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GwdHe5nQSQ

the FBI is really really good at solving these kinds of things so I'm very interested to see if this guy can get away with it

we've narrowed it down to someone with a gun, wearing black, that hates rich people

police have released a sketch:

https://i.imgur.com/YHCGdPK.jpeg

change of clothes in the back pack, e-bike goes into the pond, takes subway to the airport

lol it's Slim Shady I knew it

“Yes, there had been some threats. ... I don’t know details,” his wife, Paulette Thompson, told the network after her husband was shot in New York City on Wednesday morning. “I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him.”

"I wasn't really listening. It was more his thing, you know?"

“it’s not like they wanted to kill me, so I was like whatever’s”

maybe she ordered the hit

I wonder if Ryan Murphy already has this optioned

here's hoping this knob just vanishes into the ether like Gaetz

Senate sources say there is a block of likely “hard no’s” in the Senate GOP conference and identify Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as lawmakers who view Hegseth’s nomination very skeptically.

“I don’t know that there’s a real clear path,” said one Republican senator, who added that colleagues “are very apprehensive” about Hegseth’s nomination.

“It’s damaging to the president,” the senator added. “It doesn’t help us in the Senate.”

It'll be DeSantis, which at least will remove that pustulum from Florida.

i don't think any of this is damaging to trump, or really to anyone. it's all taking place months before the inauguration. he's almost cleaning house. he got gaetz out of the house and into his natural role (paid talking head, no political responsibility, free to entertain maga long gones). he got ron desantis to seem like a common sense neutral alternative to hegseth. he's giving fascist GOP senators an opportunity to "oppose" trump and demonstrate that they're not total asskissing pushovers doing it for money and power. i've never read the goddamn overton window whatever but he shifted it. the normal presidential nominee is now a complete sociopath. the moderate neutral political compromise is now ron desantis. meanwhile, much of the liberal news is about demonstrating why a completely incompetent joke of a candidate is not qualified and being outraged by it. a win for the liberal bullshit dream of the 90s and 00s (persisting today) is to prevent gaetz and hegseth from taking official cabinet positions

xp

I'm with you on the first half, not understanding the second.

i've checked out of a lot of the post-election debate, here and elsewhere, and i recognize ilx is far to the left of most online places. so, probably preaching to the choir, but i think it's long past time to not only consider but to pursue and adopt radical changes in living. the death spiral that the united states political economy is stuck in is bullshit and we don't have to keep it going more than we are forced to. i think we should pay attention and that it makes sense for the people who are invested in liberal ideas to keep "pushing back" (?) against what's happening using their usual methods. but the rest of us (imo) need to stop talking about new ways of living but actually carry them out and radically change how we spend our money and time

xxp yeah I think there's a fair amount of trolling with some of these picks (Kash Patel is another) but he gets to pay some debts to the kooks, confident that these jackasses won't get within 100 miles of the WH... win/win

I don't think having Gaetz and Hegseth rejected outright was in any way part of the plan for Trump and team. They wanted to put the absolute worst maniacs in place but are having to settle for regular shitty Republicans. This is a loss for Trump, he's already clearly pissing off congressional Republicans that he needs on his side.

yeah, let's not pretend Trump is any shrewder than he was in 2017. He wanted these creeps and expected confirmation.

it's not about being shrewd. and let's not pretend trump is the only one making these decisions. it's about "flood the zone with shit", and it's about shifting the overton window. don't just nominate 1 obviously disqualified (but loyal) person - nominate a whole cabinet full of them. 2 or 3 will attract enough media attention to sink, the rest will make it, because which GOP senator is going to be against all of the cabinet nominations? the maximum you can politically get away with opposing, for a gop senator, is 1. more than 1 and you have identified yourself as a wedge susan collins kind of bullshitter, which works in maine but in general is a position that is eliminated by loyalty tests

Again, I agree with "flood the zone" but not "with shit." We know Trump! He believes these are qualified nominees.

it's guys he knows, guys he's had lunch with or golfed with, and they're loyal... that's all that matters

and although trump surely appointed literal agents of evil in 2017, there is still a difference in his cabinet appointments now vs then. the game is up, it's full on now because he knows that the majority of voters won't punish him for it. he hated taking the advice of people, back then, to moderate (having someone like john kelly as chief of staff - and god fuck me when the moderate influences are john kelly and jeff fucking sessions, but that's where we were). now - as many people have speculated before the election - he has no reason to pay attention to those moderating voices. he is either finishing his second term and peacefully passing on the presidency to the next duly elected nominee, lol, or he is going to try to convert this - most likely legally, with the aide of the supreme court - into the last term of the first period of the united states. everyone gets embarrassed about actually saying that but it's where we are. do you trust republicans, who control all three branches of government, to do the right thing? which thing would result in more money and power for them? and do you trust people who kiss joe scarborough's ass to mount an effective opposition?

this is why i say the "liberal" news sources, and people, are falling trap to this overton window shit - they're stuck in the hunter biden pardon / obvious cabinet nominee jokes, which makes a lot of sense given the last 100 years or so of history, but we are entering a new era imo

We know Trump! He believes these are qualified nominees.

respectively, who cares?

i haven't read the whole thread so i apologize if the main conversation was about whether or not trump likes these pieces of shit. of course he does! does he believe they're qualified? yeah, sure! they kiss his qualified ass, right? does he realize he's brilliantly playing the political class? i don't fucking know! who cares?

*respectfullllly, oooof god

z_tbd, I don't know what you're arguing other than "shit's fucked up and will get more fucked up," which I know because I listened to SCOTUS' oral arguments in the Tennessee trans case this morning. This is a Cabinet in which my senator, the Plankton with a Hairpiece, will be the least offensive member.

As far as 'liberal media' goes: I haven't listened or read a word other than a couple of my usual stopovers since Election Day. I doubt ILX is the place that gorges on Joy Reid monologues.

damn, i suck so badly at communicating! i say that because you're a good communicator.

well, i think we're on the same side so i'll leave it there. i wasn't actually even ever disagreeing you with anything, and i wasn't arguing. i was trying to express what i feel as a push toward radicalism now, and a rejection of the old political game. but i suppose everyone thinks that's what they're trying to express

i don't think, in general, what i'm hearing here or in all the regular places where i get news/opinion, is enough. i think what just happened, a month ago, is maybe the final wake up call. but i realize that makes me seem like a crazy person

No, you're right to be afraid. And I'm sorry for the prickliness. I objected to crediting Trump with strategic thinking when he's the guy for whom strategic thinking is figuring out how to get to the bathroom after eating two rounds of KFC mac n cheese.

oh appreciate that, and you're never prickly, i don't mean to come across that way. i'm also 99th percentile defensive, and i'm sure we both know that, sadlol.

i don't think trump is strategic and i don't credit him with knowing anything. but i don't think a hammer is strategic either and i don't credit it with being very useful for various reasons. i'm not a conspiracy guy and it's not the reptiles, but i think trump is openly corrupt and open to being used by others in exchange for...golf and listening to him talk? it doesn't matter, but just because he's a doof doesn't mean he's useful

it seems like he mostly picks people that he's seen on TV and perhaps look like they belong on TV, that well may be a perfectly sound strategy in MAGA world

he's the guy for whom strategic thinking is figuring out how to get to the bathroom after eating two rounds of KFC mac n cheese.

...who ultimately shits himself because there's at least five people in line more than happy to change his diaper.

every american president has had some relationship with the media, going back to the beginning, but for trump that's all there is... it's a reality show administration so you want to cast it appropriately. I'm not joking when I say that, I think he sees it as casting for the next season

I think Trump is shrewd enough to understand positional bargaining and ambit claims - even if his understanding and deployment is farily crude/instinctive. If he gets people like Gaetz and Hesgeth through, then great. But even if he doesn't, the end result will likely be more to his liking than if he started with more "reasonable" proposals.

And yeah, the conversation around "who is a reasonable cabinet pick" shifts as a result, just as the conversation around "what makes someone merit the term 'fascist'?" has shifted.

I think one thing that has changed is not Trump himself - who is getting less rather than more shrewd, if anything - but rather the surrounding discursive context (at least for now), where Trump winning a plurality of votes is treated by a greater proportion of the media and punditry as enshrining his political judgment with some kind of special power or wisdom.

just as the conversation around "what makes someone merit the term 'fascist'?" has shifted.

i will say, i think it's far better to be on the more inclusive side of the term than on the side that waits until it's in a history textbook to call it what it is. they haven't accomplished it yet, but it is the clear goal. it's christian fundamentalist nationalism, extralegal, with the expected backing of the police and incarceration systems paired with mass deportations; they make it very clear that's what they want

He believes these are qualified nominees.

The only qualification that matters to Trump is whether the nominee will always do his bidding no matter what. He knew that his choices had to have some superficial connection to the job, e.g. Gaetz has a law degree and Hegseth is currently a Major(?) in the Army Reserve, but in Trump's eyes that's just window dressing. He also knows if they do anything he doesn't like he can fire them via Truth Social and get another stooge.

also even if trump is a fucking idiot, he still has stephen miller as the rasputin in the wings, possible bannon now as well, they're probably actively supporting this kakistocracy and whispering suggestions for him to mull, until he decides it was his idea after all

even though it feels like he can get away with anything, political capital is still a real thing, and Trump burns through it like crazy (Dems OTOH often run away from it). This is a big reason why his agenda went nowhere in his first term. Doesn't mean that he won't do lots of bad things, but every L takes a little bit away from that.

(and they have a plurality because there are a sizable amount of christian fundamentalists who feel bad about some of the crimes against humanity but ultimately support christian nationalism)

xposts!

The most depressing thing I read today was Tom Edsall's roundup of eager capitulation of the elites: (gift link) https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/04/opinion/trump-patel-vought-project-2025.html?unlocked_article_code=1.fE4.lKGU.YUEYYckr4Mhg&smid=url-share

Of course Edsall's problem is he expected different. What in history makes you think a technocratic capitalist elite will have trouble accommodating autocracy?

The words "deny," "defend" and "depose" were discovered by detectives on the shell casings found at the scene where Thompson was killed, police sources told ABC News late Wednesday evening.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-shot-chest-midtown-manhattan-masked-gunman-large/story?id=116446382

ah - I see the dystopia thread has this subject covered

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/05/biden-immigration-jails-trump-mass-deportation-plan

Revealed: Biden lays groundwork to expand immigration jails as Trump readies for office

In the past year, the Biden administration has extended contracts for private sector jails before Trump’s plan for mass deportations

José Olivares in New York
Thu 5 Dec 2024 11.00 GMT

Donald Trump’s plan for the mass deportation of undocumented people and a related expansion of US detention facilities is getting an unexpected head start from Joe Biden – and private prison companies are already cashing in.

The Biden administration has, for the past year, been in the process of extending contracts for private sector immigration jails across the US and exploring options for expanding detention capacity, a Guardian investigation has found.

This is despite both the US president’s previous statements opposing such private jails and the fact that many facilities have a reputation for inhumane conditions.

I guess that could also have gone in the dystopia thread

US politics, US dystopia, potato, potato

wait, a news story about Biden being a craven demon? who knew!!

the House of Representatives is tackling one of the most important issues the country faces this morning pic.twitter.com/azxnwndc40

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 6, 2024

"I'm taking AP Better Dead Than Red this semester, and we're taking a field trip to the Killing Rich People is Not Okay Museum."

communism will make you dangerously cool and sexy, kids

Communism is out, Russian-style oligarchies are in

Oligarch me daddy.

As noted above - Revealed: Biden lays groundwork to expand immigration jails as Trump readies for office
In the past year, the Biden administration has extended contracts for private sector jails before Trump’s plan for mass deportations

And thus Biden is also helping private equity make money from immigrant detention by allowing ICE to extend contracts to shady private sector jails (in 2020 he had promised no more private sector prisons). While Biden's FCC in July did crack down on prison phone companies by capping how much they can charge for calls, The Intercept article notes that Republican states attorneys general are challenging those caps in court.

https://theintercept.com/2024/12/04/trump-mass-deportation-private-equity-prisons/

bad faith times on the united healthcare ceo killing and massive outpouring of anger at our crazy health care system

https://bad-faith-times.ghost.io/were-going-to-need-some-steam-control-2/

The 14 billionaires that are part of the Trump 2nd administration , the Republican's majorities in the House and Senate, and Fox News, Sinclair, and Republican podcasts and social media will keep trying to convince people that private sector health care is better than commie socialist health care.

The Democrats who sweep into power in 2028 will do the same.

Then what will happen?

the most magical thing of all: bipartisanship

Come with me and you'll be
In a world of good faith negoiation

negotiation that is

"Negotiation, that is!"

https://i.imgur.com/YKDH4dP.jpg

Am seeing conservative National Review citing multiple polls that 80 percent of Americans polled are happy with their health insurance (and 70 % with health insurance via Obamacare are happy); while NPR says polls show Americans who are not sick like their health insurance; and I have also been reading some center-liberals like Vox's Eric Levitz noting that anesthesiologists make more than the median salary for doctors and are therefore overpaid (but they can't prove that cracking down on what gets paid to anesthesiologists will get passed on to patients)

https://www.inspiraadvantage.com/blog/highest-paid-doctors-in-the-us

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/12/06/nx-s1-5217736/brian-thompson-unitedhealthcare-ceo-social-media

https://www.vox.com/policy/390031/anthem-blue-cross-blue-shield-anesthesia-limits-insurance

Journalist Levitz and a few others say attempts to limit payments to anesthesiologists are a good thing (because anesthesiologists make big $ & because of some examples of anesthesiologist fraud) (but they can't prove that health insurers will pass any savings on to patients)

My guess is that Americans who get their insurance is their employer are indeed more satisfied than those who have to pay out of pocket. A group plan will always offer more coverage at less of a cost than an individual plan, if you can even find an individual plan to purchase. We had a really hard time finding one that wasn’t catastrophic in nature.

*via their employer

My employer plan is fucking garbage but it is indeed still better than most marketplace plans.

But compared to the $40/month HMO with 100% coinsurance my company offered my first year, this plan basically only is worth it for the Rx coverage, useless for health unless I go to the hospital 3 or 4 times

That’s the thing — even if you think your employer’s plan is shit it is still better than having to.buy on the market.
Unless you’re looking to spend $1500/month rather than $40.

Yup.

An employer plan is generally better, but it's also worth asking how much money your employer is spending on your behalf for that plan and whether you would be better served choosing how that money was spent instead.

My employer plan is almost $1500 a month for family coverage. Albeit pre-tax. Seems to be pretty good insurance though.

How’s this for a radical idea, health insurance should simply pay for all the medical care you need

You’re welcome

xp

but that's how much you pay, right? there's also a significant portion that your employer pays that doesn't typically get disclosed

I pay $1500/mo for absolute shit coverage

They also randomly reassign my doctor literally every year

That sucks. I think my mom (small business owner) had a 5k deductible before she went onto Medicare, but I can’t remember her monthly charges. I think they were bigger than her mortgage, though.

xp

but that's how much you pay, right? there's also a significant portion that your employer pays that doesn't typically get disclosed

How’s this for a radical idea, health insurance should simply pay for all the medical care you need

You’re welcome

*next decade or two, fuck you autocorrect

So Trump is still just saying he’s going to end birthright citizenship by executive order, which is so nuts and obviously goes to court immediately. But I don’t even understand the legal theory that he could assert that by executive order, just feels entirely made up. Which I guess we’ll see a lot of.

I guess the plan is to get the issue to the Supreme Court, who might decide it’s unconstitutional.

the Court would have to overturn precedent in this case:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Wong_Kim_Ark

They would never overturn a precedent surely

They wouldn’t dare upend “settled law!”

I don’t even understand the legal theory that he could assert that by executive order

He doesn't need one. There's no downside for him if he tries it, only positive benefit. It displays his Strength, by ignoring every limit on his power and trumpets his anti-immigrant convictions in the bluntest, simplest and most unmistakable terms. His fanatical supporters will eat it up and delightedly howl for more. It's a message about what he'd do if he were dictator instead of president and he will repeat this kind of behavior constantly to test what kind of concessions he can pry loose.

Should note that Wong Kim Ark became law thanks to the Fuller Court, the most conservative in its history....until the Roberts Court.

Yeah, but "conservative" used to mean conservative. "Conservative" means "right-wing radical" now.

I can imagine this SCOTUS looking for ways to box in citizenship, but from what I've read on the issue even before the 14th Amendment — and with the obvious exception of enslaved people — the U.S. had always assumed and acted as if people born here were citizens. So even "originalists" don't appear to have a leg to stand on.

There would also be the weird question of retroactivity and how to deal with it.

They also randomly reassign my doctor literally every year

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera),

yeah, same! i saw my primary care physician twice in a row this year, the same person twice, and it was the first time i'd seen my pcp twice in a row since 2015. all the other times, i'd try to make an appointment with the person i just saw and someone would eventually let me know that the doctor had gone far far away and would never be coming back.

but hey, it's the best health care system in the world so i can't expect anything to improve in my lifetime

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/none-of-these-people-should-ever-work-in-politics-again

I'm fine if none of those people work in politics again (which of course won't happen, I'm sure they're all already being paid a lot of money by somebody to continue working in politics). And I agree about the mishandling of Biden, the lack of an actual economic narrative or agenda, and the idiocy of chasing moderate Republicans.

That said, I'm also less convinced than I was six months ago that this was much of a winnable election for Democrats, as the unpopular incumbent party coming out of the turmoil of the the pandemic. Harris could have run a better campaign, for sure. But she did run a better campaign than Biden was capable of, she put a tremendous amount of time and energy into the swing states, she did a lot of things that a theoretical winning campaign would have needed to do.

Which is to say, the problems of the "Democratic Party" as a whole are much greater than Harris could have possibly addressed in three months, even if she was the right person to address them (which, obviously, was not her inclination). This isn't really news to those of us who spend a lot of time talking about the problems of the Democratic Party. People like Plouffe and Dillon are part of that failing infrastructure, but they're more effects than causes. It all goes much deeper than them.

Tipsy OTM

she wasn't going to be able to upend the entire democratic party in 3 months, but she had an opportunity to push for something new, even if "new" would mean old ideas like universal healthcare. but instead she said she would be exactly like joe biden. you can blame that on the political environment, but gotta say i can think of quite a few OTHER politicians who, if given 3 months to define and advocate for a new agenda, would hit the ground running and would be barnstorming the fucking nation nonstop to make the case, rather than....i mean, i know we've all heard it but liz cheney. of all the families to ally with, the one that was so bad that even republicans hated them by the end. anyway, since harris didn't have anything new to offer, instead the conversation (at least among people i talk to) was about how she still supported the ongoing genocide, and what a bummer it was that the only two candidates both supported the genocide. uplifting themes for the final push to election day! the article table linked mentions the harris campaign ignoring jamaal bowman's offer to go to michigan to try to convince arab americans there that they should vote for harris even though she obviously doesn't support the children getting massacred in palestine. but yeah, even if they would have taken bowman up on his offer, what a shitty situation for that to be the context of campaign activities, trying to go on an apology tour of swing states while having nothing new to push to give people any hope that something better might be coming

and yes, despite all that she did much better than biden would have. amazing.

this is a very bleak time, but it is the PERFECT time to completely ditch the democratic party

gotta say i can think of quite a few OTHER politicians who, if given 3 months to define and advocate for a new agenda, would hit the ground running and would be barnstorming the fucking nation nonstop to make the case,

who?

(Am not being sarcastic)

The reality was that Biden was getting buried and Harris was the only viable choice, not based on her popularity or positions, but simply because she was VP and the convention was a couple of weeks away. She succeeded in reviving the campaign.

She had the initial advantage of being a woman of color, younger & more energetic, so she appeared at first to be refreshingly not-Biden. It was her main strength. But she apparently didn't feel capable of (or interested in) distancing herself strongly and decisively enough to truly become the Real Not-Biden candidate, any more than Humphrey could become the not-LBJ.

who?

2016 rookie card bernie sanders

I strongly disagree with tipsy, Raymond, and Alfred, but whatever.

at this point it’s all circular and i think i am right and you all think you are right so there’s no purpose in debating.

xp but i don't know who. me? i would do that? lots of people i know would do that? i guess what you're saying though is "which nationally recognized viable democratic candidate with a realistic chance to win in summer 2024 after the biden debate?", and the answer to that is the rock dwayne johnson

most people think they're right
most people are wrong
some people are telling the truth
but everyone lies sometimes

these aren't parody song lyrics, it's just an abandoned logic puzzle

i was surprised when harris kept jen omalley dillon and mike donilon on her campaign. perfect opportunity to dump those losers

here's some insane shit: https://www.yahoo.com/news/16-people-voted-donald-trump-121602084.html

"I was really excited about voting for Trump because I wanted to free Palestine, but then, when he got elected, he picked a bunch of zionists for his cabinet, and now I think the news might have lied to me about Trump."

-Anonymous, 32, Pennsylvania"

several other responses in there that make it clear these idiots either didn't pay attention to actual news, or didn't understand how tarriffs work

at this point it’s all circular and i think i am right and you all think you are right so there’s no purpose in debating.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table),

I'm not sure what you even referred to? I offered no opinions.

unless you got something to say about the Fuller Court

I am just leery of people being either heroes or villains depending on how close elections play out, when a lot of things that decide close elections are not directly under control of the people making strategic decisions. Trump said and did an ocean's worth of idiotic things during the campaign, many of which his own campaign team hated, and the fact that he won doesn't mean those were good or smart things to say or do. It means mostly that there were "fundamentals" on his side that overrode whatever damage those things did.

Not in any way defending Plouffe or Dillon etc. I just think they're more symptoms than causes of Democratic Party problems.

not doing more to distance herself from unpopular biden was one of harris' biggest missed opportunities imho, and hiring his entire campaign staff was just a totally unnecessary own-goal

xp I agree with that. I feel like we get caught up in the minutiae of specific campaign decisions and personnel, which is not to say that she couldn't have improved on her numbers here and there had she made different choices. But it seems clear that the Democratic Party has become a toxic brand to a wide swath of voters, and that's not something that could have been fixed in a three-month presidential campaign. It's a much bigger, long-term project.

I think it would've been more difficult than people realize for Harris to hire an all-new campaign staff given the way in which she became the nominee and the time constraints involved. I also think that had she given Dillion the heave ho, she likely would've just hired someone else from a similar background and with similar instincts.

I think it would've been more difficult than people realize for Harris to hire an all-new campaign staff given the way in which she became the nominee and the time constraints involved. I also think that had she given Dillion the heave ho, she likely would've just hired someone else from a similar background and with similar instincts.

― jaymc, Sunday, December 8, 2024 6:59 PM (eight seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

i can understand keeping some admin and other people for logistical reasons, but the campaign chair and campaign manager should have been taken out with the trash. his campaign was an unprecedented disaster, no one involved high up should ever work on a campaign again. dillon and rodriguez were chosen for extreme loyalty. dillon specifically fought hard for biden to stay in the race until the bitter end and pushed him to make more public appearances after the debate

Though Ms. O’Malley Dillon is not a member of the innermost Biden circle — a space reserved for family members and aides who have spent decades with the president — she has emerged in this political crisis as the central figure keeping the Biden campaign on track and driving it forward.

She is involved in every element of the campaign’s strategy and tactics, except the most important question: Should Mr. Biden remain in the race at all?

“She doesn’t have any doubt about whether he should continue,” said Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s former White House chief of staff, who returned to the campaign to lead the president’s debate preparations. “Her advice is focused on how to move the campaign forward effectively.”

While the title of campaign manager is still held by Julie Chavez Rodriguez, who helped start Mr. Biden’s re-election effort last year, Ms. O’Malley Dillon has been the functional head of his bid since early this year, serving as the chief conduit to top donors and political allies. She and Jeff Zients, the White House chief of staff, were the only two staff members in Mr. Biden’s meeting last week with Democratic governors.

Disdainful of the press and focused on the campaign’s internal tasks, Ms. O’Malley Dillon has long been known as someone who places a high value on loyalty and competence — and who does not confuse one for the other. She declined to be interviewed and has rarely consented to on-the-record interviews.

In her lone extended interview since taking over Mr. Biden’s campaign, she told the news site Puck days before the debate that she had little doubt about the result of the November election.

“Joe Biden is going to win, period,” she said.

Since the debate, Ms. O’Malley Dillon has taken to putting her name on the Biden campaign’s daily morning all-staff email, which sends the day’s instructions to organizers in battleground states and provides updates about the thinking of senior leadership at headquarters in Wilmington, Del.

In one email last week, she and Ms. Chavez Rodriguez told campaign employees that the polling for Mr. Biden was not as bad as the news media was portraying it, highlighted the campaign’s latest fund-raising numbers, and asked the staff to amplify the latest television advertisement.

Larry Cohen, a Sanders acolyte who served as co-chairman of the committee with Ms. O’Malley Dillon, said she was probably aware now that Mr. Biden needs to hold on until July 19. That is when the Rules Committee of the Democratic National Convention will meet to formalize a date before Aug. 7 for the party to formally nominate Mr. Biden — two weeks before the convention begins in Chicago.

“She knows the rules, she knows the process,” Mr. Cohen said on Monday. “She knows that even a week from now will likely be too late if he doesn’t step out this week. And he’ll outlast it.”

she was willing to have dems do a full kamikaze and throw the election just so she could keep her job. idg why anyone would want this absolute loser running their campaign

quotes were from https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/09/us/politics/biden-jen-omalley-dillon.html

They obviously didn’t care about winning very much. Harris never had legitimacy because she didn’t win a primary. For dems to win, they would have had to hold a primary.

I don’t think she could have said anything to “distance herself” from the biden admin which she was a part of. That was never possible. What she could have done us have one big bold policy proposal that dominated the conversation. Medicare for all—something snappy like that (i just made it up)

xp I really don't think that's true, that she didn't have legitimacy because she didn't win a primary, that's bullshit. She was a great candidate and ran a great campaign. People didn't want the Democratic politics brand, though, in the end.

They obviously didn’t care about winning very much. Harris never had legitimacy because she didn’t win a primary. For dems to win, they would have had to hold a primary.

― treeship 2, Sunday, December 8, 2024 7:59 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

even with the benefit of hindsight, i suspect this is not true. harris probably would've won a primary anyways, and it just would've hobbled her. a primary would've been good if it had ended up with a better candidate, but i don't think voters care at all about the legitimacy of winning a primary

I don’t think she could have said anything to “distance herself” from the biden admin which she was a part of. That was never possible.

just because she can't perfectly separate herself doesn't mean she couldn't have done more to create distance. biden was at extreme toxic levels of unpopularity, and instead of even trying to make a break (e.g. "biden made some decisions that i disagreed with, here's what i would have done different and how this would have resulted in a different economy") she hired his entire campaign staff of die-hard biden stans and spent the whole campaign defending his economy and framing her platform as building on his achievements. as an affluent aspiring member of the DNC who loves gaslighting voters over their lived experiences this pleased me, but "four more years of biden economy" was exactly the wrong message for voters imo

What she could have done us have one big bold policy proposal that dominated the conversation. Medicare for all—something snappy like that (i just made it up)

hard to square this with harris doing better than progressive senators in their own states (she got 6k more votes than sanders in vermont, 84k more than warren in massachussets). single payer also lost 80% yes 20% no in a colorado ballot initiative in 2016, when the state went for hilary by 5pts. harris also polled way ahead of trump on questions like "If you had to say, who do you think would do a better job handling health care issues as president if elected this year?" (in the last poll on oct 7-9 she got 48 vs 40 for trump) so it's not like health care was an area where she had a huge amount to gain. not sure what the political future of m4a is but i don't see much evidence it would've been an electoral magic bullet in 2024

M4A would’ve been a good offer, particularly post-pandemic, and explained by saying that a global pandemic where Americans from all walks of life come out of it with life-changing conditions and it’s a crapshoot who that happens to, possibly the perfect springboard. Anti vax views probably catch harder in the US because people are scared of the cost of traditional medicine, and try anything ‘holistic’ or are more likely to believe bullshit in the absence of a normal (and affordable) interaction with PCPs.

Kushner family bestie Netanyahu going into Lebanon in October with Biden handing him extra means to do so probably cost Harris a win in Michigan.

She was a great candidate and ran a great campaign. People didn't want the Democratic politics brand, though, in the end.

She was a better candidate than expected, but not a great candidate. Perhaps a great candidate for a different electorate at a different time, but not for the one that existed. If people wanted a different brand and you serve up a candidate who epitomises that brand, definitionally this can not be a great candidate.

I agree the campaign was good, given the extremely limited timeframe and Biden's hospital pass, and there was no real alternative given the circumstances, she was the best candidate under the circumstances but that is not the same as a great candidate

The Democratic brand is the manager at your job. Picking a candidate who is the manager at your job when the voters wanted someone who isn't the manager at your job cannot be a great candidate, even if its not necessarily her fault per se

And when your opponent is running on a platform of "I'm going to make China pay your bills", running on a platform of "You don't have any bills" isn't a punchy message

I cannot comprehend finding her a great candidate. She has been in the national public eye for five years, and I have genuinely no idea what, if anything, she believes in, or what she would have focused on as president. I know there were tons of policy proposals and some kind of message about an "opportunity economy" but c'mon. I think any great candidate has to be someone that you can listen to for a few minutes and know what they're about and what they want to do. Obama was pretty vague but he did talk a lot about health care and not getting involved in stupid wars, and he was a massively talented speaker.

I think she might have had a chance if Biden had stepped down when he dropped out - I think i said at the time that the American public seeing someone relatively coherent and non-decrepit in charge for the first time in 8 years could give her a big advantage. And she could have actually made policy changes to set her apart from Biden, though who knows if that would have happened.

When Harris entered the race, through to when she picked Tim Walz and he was allowed to communicate in the way that made him attractive as a pick in the first place, progressives went wild and there seemed to be enough hope to put the ticket over the line. Because who does most of the GOTV work? Progressives. Of course the DNC would rather pivot to the ‘centre’ and fellate random Cheneys than owe the progressives in the party absolutely anything. That has to change but I don’t think it will.

and so we will continue to have right wing governments in the US for the rest of our foreseeable futures.

I saw someone post a list of what Harris focused on in her speeches in the campaign, and she went from emphasizing economic issues and mentioning corporate price gouging to just in the final days focusing only on the danger of Trump. Since the Biden administration had not spoken out about attempting to bring down inflation and noting it was a world wide issue ( and the press wasn’t doing that either) , too many people were not inspired or fell for Trump con.

xpost i think one reason we may have overestimated her chances is that the odds/polls started moving her way pre-DNC and pre-convention, so we thought "oh man it's already looking better and we'll get the bump from the debate and DNC" and then came to find out the increase before both of those things were an unprecedented 'new candidate' bump which basically absorbed any bump from debate and DNC

BREAKING: Multiple law enforcement officials have identified the suspect in the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO as 26-year-old Luigi Mangione. https://t.co/dWeDgi5RFu

— Action News on 6abc (@6abc) December 9, 2024

some kind of message about an "opportunity economy"

this is the sort of dreadful watered down message that comes out of committees of strategists who think like marketers. they expect voters to react to the promise of an "opportunity economy" like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMRrNY0pxfM

xpost oops wrong thread

Mangione? Shooting CEOs Feels So Good! <Flugelhorn Solo>

the backpack filled with monopoly money is very batman villain. i hope people have been planting fake clues to lead police astray.

If it was a movie the backpack would have exploded shortly after thr Monopoly money reveal

When Senate Democrats returned to Capitol Hill in November after Republicans secured a ruling trifecta, lawmakers vowed to act on President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees before they lose majority control of the chamber in January.The Senate has confirmed more than a dozen nominees to the federal judiciary since Election Day. But with roughly two weeks remaining before Congress recesses for the holidays, that promise has so far not extended to the 10 people up for judgeships on the backlogged local D.C. courts, many of whom have been awaiting confirmation since July....

If a unanimous consent agreement cannot be reached, Schumer can instead file cloture on the nominee, which brings the floor debate to a close. A simple majority is needed to invoke cloture. Then Schumer can hold a confirmation vote. Schumer’s office didn’t respond to questions asking why the leader hadn’t filed cloture on these 10 nominees and whether he plans to do so.

I read elsewhere that they need Manchin & Sinema's votes and can't be sure that they will be there and or will vote in favor of nominees now during this lame duck period

above excerpts from gift Washington Post article

https://wapo.st/3ZI4ctb

they need Manchin & Sinema's votes and can't be sure that they will be there and or will vote in favor of nominees

is THAT all?? if there's no vote before recess those nominations are dead anyway. why not try?

just because she can't perfectly separate herself doesn't mean she couldn't have done more to create distance. biden was at extreme toxic levels of unpopularity, and instead of even trying to make a break (e.g. "biden made some decisions that i disagreed with, here's what i would have done different and how this would have resulted in a different economy") she hired his entire campaign staff of die-hard biden stans and spent the whole campaign defending his economy and framing her platform as building on his achievements. as an affluent aspiring member of the DNC who loves gaslighting voters over their lived experiences this pleased me, but "four more years of biden economy" was exactly the wrong message for voters imo

lolll flopson

not sure what the political future of m4a is but i don't see much evidence it would've been an electoral magic bullet in 2024

― flopson, Monday, 9 December 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Funny thing to say given the conversations post- healthcare CEO shooting in just the last week.

Twitter conversation is not a reliable indicator.

Kamala needed to shoot a healthcare CEO who had broken into her house

its not too much to ask for given how much she talked about how many guns she had

Inchoate rage is a better play than the convoluted mess that constituted any social safety net proposal from Harris.

Force Make America Great Again to go heads up with Shit Is Fucked Up And Bullshit

Twitter conversation is not a reliable indicator.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Tuesday, 10 December 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Its far more preferable reading that than your posts.

the problem with harris's healthcare policy is less that it was not medicare for all (that's obviously the ideal) and more that it was almost non-existent, all she was proposing was the at-home medicare expansion for seniors but she didn't even pretend to have anything for anyone else. even biden promised a public option in 2020 and she couldn't even pretend to back that again

Twitter conversation is not a reliable indicator.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Tuesday, 10 December 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Its far more preferable reading that than your posts.

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 10 December 2024 08:44 (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

The whole point about the discourse post CEO shooting is ppl being surprised at the lack of pearl clutching in normie spaces, not twitter, so it's kind of a red herring to talk about the Musk site.

I could've said this point has been talked about on the thread and I am fully aware of other examples, btw.

Any regulation put forth by a federal agency in the final 60 legislative days is fair game for Congress to slash—whether it be an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule about methane emissions or a Consumer Product Safety Commission rule that sets standards for infant support cushions. Spoiler alert: Both of those rules could be on the chopping block in the early weeks of the Trump administration.

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-12-09-how-trump-congress-could-reverse-biden-era-regulations/

Twitter conversation is not a reliable indicator.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Tuesday, 10 December 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Its far more preferable reading that than your posts.

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, December 10, 2024 3:44 AM

fp'ed you for this post. It's not fuckin' needed.

What's not needed is Aimless' condencension and lack of reading comprehension.

Its all over the board, with two or three posters reacting elsewhere. Don't defend this shit.

Look, we've all rolled our eyes at his needless explainer posts, but it doesn't look to me like he was picking on you this time -- and you do post an awful lot of tweets.

That's beside the point.

The tweets contain actual information, and are (most of the time) relevant to the thread in question.

Sometimes.

And I didn't even post a tweet here. He just wanted to post a cheap shot and you couldn't see through it.

some boards don't allow users to talk about each other's "lack of reading comprehension"

Here's the exchange I was responding to:

not sure what the political future of m4a is but i don't see much evidence it would've been an electoral magic bullet in 2024

― flopson

Funny thing to say given the conversations post- healthcare CEO shooting in just the last week.

― xyzzzz

You don't live in the USA or in a country where health care is dominated by insurance companies, or where m4a is a political issue, but judging by your dozen-plus posts a day that solely consist of an embedded Tweet you appear to spend hours on X every day. So, what other source of conversations with US voters were you basing your comment on? ILX? c'mon, xyz, what you got?

I actually read other people's posts, submitted by other ppl in this v msg board, if you care to look around?

campaigning on Medicare for all should happen simply because it's a policy we badly need in this country, and it's one of those that people will warm to the more you expose them to it. you can't just say "oh, well, I mentioned it and people bristled at it, time to throw it into the ashcan", you gotta work on it for years like the ACA. abandoning it from the jump isn't a winning strategy.

that being said, would it have swung the election? I doubt it. people point to the popularity of single-payer, but polls have consistently shown that what the people actually support is the government ensuring everybody has access to healthcare, but most don't support the government actually providing a public option. a 2023 Gallup poll reflected this split, with 57% believing government should ensure everybody has insurance but 53% saying they wanted the health insurance industry run by private companies and not government. 2020 Pew research poll was similar, showing 63% wanted government to ensure insurance for all, but only 36% expressed support for a single government program like single-payer, and still wanted private insurers involved. PBS poll from 2022 only showed about 40% for a single-payer system. What is true though is that single-payer IS pretty popular with Democratic voters.

That's not an argument not to campaign on it, it's the exact opposite - those are workable numbers that can grow over years and years of campaigning, townhalls, initiatives/etc. as far as encouraging enough D voters to vote to swing the election? unclear. might have peeled some Indies, might have encouraged some Ds who eventually stayed home, but I don't get the impression that this was the top priority for people who voted Trump. although there are many valid reasons Kamala is being criticized for her campaign, there were also some severe roadblocks from the jump, not least the fact that she had an abbreviated timeframe to run a campaign.

Biden drops out in like...January of this year? who knows. but this should be a lesson perhaps that running a conservative campaign with the goal being 'mistake-free' rather than actually just taking chances outside of status quo isn't a very good strategy and it didn't even wind up paying off, so why not campaign on these things that are growing in popularity nationally but the party has been hesitant to embrace because they're afraid of bullshit 'electability impacts'?

Well put, N.

remember all the mistakes Trump made in the last 10 days? fun times

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/even-election-trump-still-selling-lot-stuff-rcna183411

Trump is still hawking Trump—branded merchandise despite conflicts and ethics issues, because well I guess he can

Thank you, Neanderthal. There's plenty of evidence that medicare for all would not have been not a magic bullet (post-CEO-assassination irony not intended) to have changed the outcome of the recent election, and saying so was not a strange statement from flopson.

Not only is Twitter discourse on the recent assassination an unreliable indicator of US voter attitudes last November, but forming conclusions about the US electorate based on ILX discourse around that event is, to coin a phrase, a funny thing. What's most evident to me from ILX posts on the subject is our frustration that m4a has consistently failed to win broad voter support.

That you thought conclusions were being formed is another, v funny, thing.

pardon me, I didn't realize your comment was entirely pointless.

Aimless, pointless, brainless.

No real dog in this fight but the discourse in the past few days hasn't been ILXors saying THEY want m4a (that indeed goes without saying), it's ILXors expressing surprise at how sanguine ppl they considered to be outside their lefty bubbles are about the assassination.

sharp!

sorry D, xp

yeah the fact that we're hearing people IRL rather than on Twitter or here saying that maybe this CEO deserved it is what makes this feel different

I haven't been on Twitter much recently and haven't looked at NRO etc., I'm curious what if anything the right-wing take on the shooting is. Anyone have observations?

It's the Dems' fault

I saw that Ben Shapiro was digusted at how the left was celebrating the murder, but his fans were like "Hey, we are too!"

hearing people IRL rather than on Twitter or here saying that maybe this CEO deserved it is what makes this feel different

I agree it feels a bit different, but there's not much evidence it will make any political difference. when it comes to voting a majority of the US electorate has not yet connected their obviously vast anger and frustration over the US health care system with Medicare for All as a viable and helpful remedy for that problem.

Switching to a US single-payer system was first seriously proposed by Democrats about 75 years ago at a time when the New Deal was still recent and highly popular. It failed. Every attempt to get majority support for it has failed so far.

The public has been saturated for decades with carefully selected stories of how awful nationalized health care is in various other countries, designed to paint single-payer as bad care paid for by high taxation. otoh, the media abounds with glowing portraits of medical miracles performed by the US system, including the ever-popular medical dramas on television. The lesson this promotes in the public mind is that if the US takes the plunge into single-payer it will destroy the system we now have, impose universally high taxes to pay for it (no way to opt out!) and deliver care that is just as bad or worse. iow, it promotes the usual formula of fear, uncertainty and doubt about m4a.

i just don't see the venting of anger and frustration triggered by the CEO assassination as being very relevant to how m4a gains majority approval among voters during an election. for now it's a transient effect, not the beginning of the end of corporate health insurance.

yeah, an army of lobbyists are working 24/7 to keep those perceptions alive

I think two things can be true, the american public can resent the power and greed of health insurance companies/CEOs but not had a traumatic experience with their healthcare provider and don't want to let go of the current system. it's another one of those things that mostly effects the vulnerable until one day it doesn't and it's you or a loved one who's fucked

yeah, remember the defeat of the public option during the ACA debate - nobody fought all that hard to push it through; the next step would be mandatory gender surgeries in elementary schools

i was just thinking about how the "i got mine" already with health insurance is similar to the "i'm here legally" attitude former migrants have towards the ones trying to get in. it's always a zero sum game

Maybe but even ppl with excellent health care plans subsidized by their employers think they get a raw deal — long wait times on calls, endless paperwork and rigamarole. I’ve heard plenty of complaining from people who “got theirs” so to speak too. No one seems all that satisfied.

I think the biggest differences really are between the majority of people who have not yet had to deal with the healthcare system during an actual crisis/emergency/life-threatening event, and the minority who have. It’s in the nature of health itself that at any given time more people are not in medical crisis than are. (And yes, most people will eventually be in medical crisis and will confront the frustration and absurdity of the system and will belatedly wonder why someone hasn’t fixed it.)

The whole point about the discourse post CEO shooting is ppl being surprised at the lack of pearl clutching in normie spaces, not twitter, so it's kind of a red herring to talk about the Musk site.

Two big shooting shockers in a few months - someone tries to snipe a former President and current candidate, everyone forgets within 72 hours (including most of the people who ended up voting for him), then an insurance CEO gets killed with security camera footage that looks like it was taken from a CBS drama and half the country openly celebrates.

Cool zone vibes

No one seems all that satisfied

I've been more or less satisfied with Kaiser Permanente, a not-for-profit HMO here in California started by the shipbuilding tycoon... it's pretty self-contained and pretty much everything is run out of couple buildings in Oakland. But I'm (knock on wood) relatively healthy and don't go there very much. I've heard they're not very good for mental health services, however

I would honestly consider nationalizing Kaiser and spread it to the rest of the country for the public option. It's pretty good and efficient

Kudos to y’all - ime you are the 1%

they're not perfect but they don't seem obsessed with coverage denial and exorbitant out-of-pocket expenses

Yeah I remember being surprised that Blue Shield of California was also a non-profit health insurance company.

It seems intuitive to me that it would be in the public interest to make all private health insurance companies non-profit, but what do I know.

I can’t even remember who our coverage was with when my oldest son was born — it was through my wife’s work, big accounting firm, good coverage. He was in the NICU for three months, at a total bill of more than $1 million — but we only had to pay whatever the capped amount was, it was thousands but I think barely $10,000. So, that was good. We were lucky.

But mostly I haven’t needed a lot from the health care system, I have seen enough up close with my family to know to expect only chaos.

Iirc I think my sister had to pay $10,000 for a completely routine, no complication, no surgical procedures, hospital birth. And she's a federal employee.

The reality that you were “lucky” to pay $10,000 to treat your sick child is itself insane

You can hate insurance companies, and the health system generally, even if you yourself don't have a horror story of denied care / red tape / etc.

Me, I just had an organ transplant, which cost (on paper) upwards of $825,000. I was unemployed at the time. I was very fortunate that my wife has insurance, which paid for it all.

But they didn't remove mu outrage gland, so I assure you I can still hate on insurance companies just fine.

any time i see an exorbitant medical sum in the u.s., i just divide by 10 to get what it actually should cost. 10:1 is the ratio of the list price of insulin in the u.s. versus canada

The reality that you were “lucky” to pay $10,000 to treat your sick child is itself insane

For sure.

Meanwhile "single-payer healthcare" is going to go on the terrorism watch words list.

The reality that you were “lucky” to pay $10,000 to treat your sick child is itself insane

Not to mention a million dollars to monitor a sleeping infant for three months (not that it's a minor task, but that's crazy money)

Also being AFAB is like having a preexisting condition afaic — different healthcare needs bc of reproductive organs/periods as well as added stress from healthcare providers who literally don’t believe you.

this topic needs its own thread

The topic fits into US politics insofar as the topic is how and why the government is acting or failing to act to fix the healthcare system. But, you know, #onethread.

there are places:

Healthcare in the US

HEALTHCARE THREAD

don’t really see how this isn’t the appropriate thread for it.

also, as i have mentioned elsewhere, many people outside of internet-pilled heavily online types cheer the CEO murder, as they should.

shocker! The inevitable happened:

Matt Gaetz gets prime-time talkshow on hard-right outlet OANN

Former Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz has secured a prime-time slot at One America News Network (OANN), a broadcaster known for its staunch support of Donald Trump and controversial election coverage.

Gaetz, who rose to prominence as a combative Trump ally and was instrumental in ousting the former House speaker Kevin McCarthy, will host a nightly political talkshow beginning in January 2025.

xp kind of feel like the CEO killing should've had its own thread instead of discussion being relegated to the dystopia thread, but prob too late for that now

Just wait 'til the next one...

back in the day it would have had a "what's on your iPod thread" within minutes

"Rolling CEO Assassinations Thread"

A sound investment

Luigi Mangione, CEO assassin, what’s on your iPod / Playlist?

offing CEOs, classic or dud

CEOs who deserve to get offed, POX

Christopher Wray resigning. No surprise there, he was going to get fired anyway.

Wray could start a security service for C-Suite executives, staff it with ex-FBI agents fired by Patel for being part of the Deep State, and clean up!

people seem really pissed off by this and I'm not sure why.

Love these two:

🚨 BREAKING: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema just delivered a crushing blow to the labor agenda. By casting decisive NO votes against President Biden's NLRB nominee, they’ve guaranteed Democrats will lose control of the national labor board until at least 2026.

Their votes… pic.twitter.com/NTqq4PTn4K

— Chris D. Jackson (@ChrisDJackson) December 11, 2024

people seem really pissed off by this and I'm not sure why.

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Wednesday, December 11, 2024 7:29 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

because it seems like the democrats are not doing anything to fight the upcoming admin, even tho wray is not a democrat?

make him fire you, it's kinda obvious

it really does seem like congressional Democrats are either adrift or actively cheering for the Trump agenda

https://files.catbox.moe/ghzs74.gif

good riddance to bad rubbish

She missed every vote this week except for the NLRB one. Gotta keep her next employers happy.

yeah I mean wray isn't a democrat and he kinda sucks so who even cares, on the list of enraging things about the end of the Biden admin this is down on my list, way below Biden having happy smiley meetings with Trump, or fucking Clyburn urging Biden to pardon Trump.

a Dem nominating a Republican to such an important position is another rake-stepping moment.

wasn't Wray hired by Trump?

oh, right. Biden should've fired him.

I think the ten year term was to avoid the J Edgar Hoover political shit.. but here we are again

The “norm” is that every FBI director is a Republican. Dems love their norms.

the Dems, barring around ten total exceptions in both houses, can all fuck off. worse than useless.

I can’t help thinking that Trump is walking into a far more fucked up foreign policy landscape than he had the first time around. Even the easiest thing to predict about his second term - that he’d hang Ukraine out to dry - seems complicated now by the Syria situation.

My sense of Trump is that he won't see those situations as complicated, mainly because he doesn't much care about them one way or the other. If Congress wants to supply Ukraine with weaponry, he'll probably be OK with it, as long as it's half or less of what Biden sent.

IDK, his buddy Vlad might discourage that

My thinking is that, while Trump and Putin still share a bond as billionaires who lead powerful governments, Trump has gradually absorbed the idea that he is the ascendant and more powerful of the two, so he gets to set the terms of the relationship. the question now is what can Putin offer that Trump wants, not the other way around.

Trump just nominated the local Orlando ambulance chaser as Ambassador to Colombia

Trump has gradually absorbed the idea that he is the ascendant and more powerful of the two, so he gets to set the terms of the relationship.

He is wrong about this, and I hope Putin explains it to him while they're standing on one of Moscow's infamously slippery floors, by one of Moscow's many fifth-floor windows that no one ever seems to remember to keep closed.

How is he wrong on that?. Their respective positions aren't the same as last time around, Trump is surely in a stronger position than before, and Putin weaker? And I don't know that would be a good outcome either, the people around/behind Trump are likely worse than he is

Trump is term limited out and a lame duck from day one. Putin is in office as long as he wants to be or until someone defenestrates him, which, good fuckin’ luck. America is a wealthy country, and Russia is economically much weaker, and caught up in a shitty, stupid war of their own making to boot, but they’ve always been a poor country gritting it out; Trump is going to do everything he can to burn the US economy to the ground out of a unique cocktail of spite, revenge, and just being a terrible businessman who doesn’t understand how anything actually works, and when his ruinous policies (whichever ones he actually manages to implement, because remember, he’s a lunatic idiot surrounded by lunatic idiots, just like in his first term and likely worse this time) actually do real, lasting harm to the fuckstick imbeciles who voted for him, they’re going to be very upset. With luck, they’ll take it out on each other in bar fights or bring back duels or something.

Whatever. Don’t feel compelled to respond; I told myself I was gonna stay out of this thread.

I think Putin's position is weaker than it was last time around. I don't think he's in any immediate danger of defenestration but his room for manoeuvre is more limited than it was, and his position not as secure. He isn't able to escalate the war but he's not really in a position to end it either. Trump has a stronger hold on power than in 2016 and the domestic opposition much weaker. Whether he has the ability to wield that power effectively remains to be seen, but the power exists in a stronger form than it did before I think. He has more room to manoeuvre, and Putin less.

Putin may or may not be smarter than Trump, but thats only one part of the equation

putin is definitely smarter than trump

did Trump appoint a Secretary of Pillows yet?

Make America Comfy Again

DOGE will take away our pillows. Rest your head on a rock.

Do you think Musk chuckles like Butthead every time he thinks of the “DOGE” acronym

Hunter has company:

President Biden is commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 people and pardoning 39 convicted of nonviolent crimes, the largest grant of clemency by an American president in a single day, the White House announced in a statement on Thursday.

The commutations affect mostly those who had been released from prison and placed in home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic. The people who received pardons were convicted of nonviolent crimes, including possession of marijuana.

A pardon wipes out a conviction, while a commutation leaves the guilty verdict intact but reduces some or all of the punishment.

The announcement came two weeks after Mr. Biden issued a pardon for his son, Hunter, who had been convicted of gun possession and income tax evasion. That decision was harshly criticized by both Republicans and Democrats because Mr. Biden had long ruled out clemency for his son.

The White House said that the clemency announced on Thursday represented Mr. Biden’s commitment to “help reunite families, strengthen communities, and reintegrate individuals back into society.”

Mr. Biden, the statement said, is the first president to issue categorical pardons to people convicted of simple use and possession of marijuana, as well as to former service members convicted of violating the military’s former laws against homosexual conduct.

happy to see the last sentence, though convicting people in the military for being gay beautifully illustrates why America was never great.

some background on what some of these poor convicted people went through: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/air-force-veteran-imprisoned-being-gay-endures-stigma-felony-record/

Mr. Biden, the statement said, is the first president to issue categorical pardons to people convicted of simple use and possession of marijuana
i don't follow the issue closely, but i thought use/possession had already been pardoned for federal/dc?

pardon from oct 2022:

https://www.justice.gov/pardon/presidential-proclamation-marijuana-possession

On October 6, 2022, President Biden issued a presidential proclamation that pardoned many federal and D.C. offenses for simple marijuana possession offenses. On December 22, 2023, President Biden issued another proclamation that expanded the relief provided by the original proclamation. The December 2023 proclamation adds to the list of pardoned offenses the following: offenses under federal law for attempted possession of marijuana; additional offenses under the D.C. Code for simple marijuana possession; and violations of certain sections of the Code of Federal Regulations involving simple marijuana possession and use.

idk i still believe he can do it

Trump tells Time he's not sure he can get the price of groceries down:

"It's hard to bring things down once they're up. You know, it's very hard."

— Sam Stein (@samstein) December 12, 2024

but of course he did, the silicon bootlicker:

Meta donates $1m to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund

Donation comes after CEO Mark Zuckerberg dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and appears to be an effort to improve relations

someone's got to pay for Forgiato Blow to perform

Whatever. Don’t feel compelled to respond; I told myself I was gonna stay out of this thread.

Tired of being right all the time eh

UK ilxors have proved to be so much more perceptive here than US ilxors that I think deserve their own US Politics thread where they can converse undisturbed by our inferior US amateur punditry

would bookmark tbh

then it's settled. UK ilxors your path forward is clear.

The 2024 US Politics Tea Party Thread

Do the US posters get one for UK politics in exchange? The #10 Bosom Manor Thread?

I give both nations permission to post on the Canadian politics thread anytime they want

goes without saying really

I think the Doonesbury guy is doing a great job as Prime Minister.

honestly at least the UK posters know better than to slobber over politicians who are all a bunch of arseholes

no kink shaming plz

Trump nominating Amaryllis Fox Kennedy for CIA director (I guess at least she was a CIA agent). Look, if he's going to put these people in government they'd better at least tell finally unveil who killed JFK, give us at least that before society collapses

How is Amaryllis Fox Kennedy a real name?

You should talk

lol

I can't match Amaryllis

Joining the group that killed your great uncle is some sicko shit.

I assume she’s one of those Kennedys

she's kennedy-by-marriage

Oh I was hoping she was MTV Kennedy

Amaryllis? Is this Music Man

WOW.

One of the people who got their sentenced commuted by Biden today was one of the Kids-for-Cash judges.

He accepted big kickbacks in exchange for sentencing kids to a for-profit prison.

Over 2,500 children were impacted by these corrupt judges and some of them ended up… pic.twitter.com/B1mv1hvMkq

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) December 13, 2024

President Biden commuted the sentence of Rita Crundwell, the woman who embezzled over $53 million from a small Illinois town and spent it on luxury goods, real estate, and a horse breeding business.

Crundwell’s scheme was the largest municipal embezzlement in US history and… pic.twitter.com/rh5LK8XFKQ

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) December 13, 2024

many such cases

if you subtly withhold some of the details then it looks like they got away with it, indeed. (the judge did 13 of his 17 years, the embezzler was already home confined since 2021)

Glad to see someone stand up for the crooked judges who ruined kids’ lives to buy a boat.

if you subtly withhold some of the details then it looks like they got away with it, indeed. (the judge did 13 of his 17 years, the embezzler was already home confined since 2021)

― StanM, Thursday, December 12, 2024 10:10 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the fuck is wrong with you lol

We’re still pretending that Joe Biden ever had any scruples? Crikey

:-D

yeah the Kids for Cash judge was under house arrest, was not in prison. i know that's not going to be a huge deal for some of you, but he's served most of his time

some of y'all love seeing people suffer don't you

I think this sheds some light on the often dubious distinction between violent and nonviolent crimes. But yeah afaict all three of these people spent many years in prison, and if you're mad about it I'd like to hear why you think they deserved further confinement, what purpose that would serve?

don't get me wrong they're scumbags, and imo abusing a political office is way worse than selling drugs or robbing a bank or w/e, and if we must live in a carceral state I'd prefer those crimes be treated as the worst (e.g., my sole exception to otherwise opposing the death penalty would be for anyone attempting to seize high political office; too much societal risk of it being repeated). but I don't think those are sufficient reasons to be outraged

Are those two people or a handful more whose crimes make some of us especially rage-ful--are they the point? Or is the point the other 11,498 people?

I don't have the energy to get mad about this, like obviously it sucks but I object to being derailed and having to inspect the motivations of the derailment every time.

io otm.

I'd add that when there are 1500 commutations to sign at once Biden is going to rely entirely on his staff to compile the list. His personal involvement probably consisted of laying out some broad ideas of what he wanted, then some followup conversations with the senior staff member he assigned to oversee it. Hunter was the one he obviously took a deep personal interest in.

Sorry 1500 not 11,500 -- lol my bad I wish he HAD pardoned 11,500 people.

Couldn’t he just wipe away tens of thousands of felony drug convictions? You want real change, give those people a chance to have careers and vote

Joe Biden does not want real change.

Couldn’t he just wipe away tens of thousands of felony drug convictions?

Biden can only pardon or commute federal crimes. Most of those convictions were in state courts under state law. So, no, he can't. Based on his prior actions regarding federal prisoners convicted of nonviolent drug offenses, he would have already done it, if it were in his power.

I think the Doonesbury guy is doing a great job as Prime Minister.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Thursday, December 12, 2024 5:21 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

lol

There is federal habeas corpus doctrine, which could free prisoners convicted in the state system when convictions violate constitutional rights. Con law is so malleable and contorted these days. I don't see why Biden couldn't do something along these lines by executive order, as he is allegedly "immune" for official acts.

I am being a little sarcastic, but the usual logic is to get a President elected who appoints federal judges who are sympathetic to habeas corpus appeals. Maybe it's hard to sell voters on that.

California freed a lot of prisoners during covid and has various laws protecting ex-prisoners from employment discrimination. Voting has been restored in some states for some people with some criminal records. Like abortion, this seems state by state now.

Awesome that all these tech companies are donating millions to the fucking inauguration fund

Lina Khan is messing up their business with her antitrust and consumer-protection crusade.

don't get me wrong they're scumbags, and imo abusing a political office is way worse than selling drugs or robbing a bank or w/e, and if we must live in a carceral state I'd prefer those crimes be treated as the worst (e.g., my sole exception to otherwise opposing the death penalty would be for anyone attempting to seize high political office; too much societal risk of it being repeated). but I don't think those are sufficient reasons to be outraged

― rob, Friday, December 13, 2024 6:52 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is basically my personal source of outrage! outrage maybe a bit strong, but (as you lay out) it’s a clear moral delineation point. make these fuckers serve out their sentences!

Given a de facto finite amount of commutation/pardon power, I’m not super cool with it being delegated to influence peddling. We know Joe Biden doesn’t know either of those people by name so a donor who knows a guy who knows a guy got their names added and that sucks.

It doesn’t require much energy to roll your eyes at Democrats doing Democratic things.

afaic the judge in the Cash for Kids case could have been disappeared and the world would be better for it, my desire for abolition doesn’t extend to people who kept kids in prison in exchange for money.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/12/faa-elon-musk/

The Dem chosen FAA head could have stayed in office , but he’s quitting instead

too soon, too soon

Democrats eye Harris 2028 presidential run as they devise political comeback
Party aides are confident in US vice-president’s ability to bounce back, including a bid for California governor

yes

The Dem chosen FAA head could have stayed in office , but he’s quitting instead

I've come around to the position that {Gary Oldman-in-Leon-the-Professional voice} everyone should resign and force/let the asshole staff the entire government with his lackeys and goons. Then when everything falls to shit there will be literally no one else to blame.

and in the meantime people die

Shit, I might be one of them.

I get that theory but civilian regular employees of the FAA aren’t going to quit, because they need their jobs. Making it easier to put a new FAA chief in will just make it easier for Musk to get the FAA to drop regulations of his company and allow him to make even more money.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/16/politics/fact-check-trump-false-claims-mar-a-lago/index.html

Daniel Dale factchecking Trump press conference this morning. 4 more years of this nonsense and it seems like reporters there are not factchecking him live in their questioning or trying harder to do follow ups

xp it's all about the billionaire cronies of Donald Trump making billions more now as he does too, and we are left with social security promises that are not fulfilled, diminished medicare for people over 65, decimation of medicaid, and privatization of the post office? A plutocracy that is ripping off all of the taxpaying public for their own gain, and most of the public doesn't even know or care. It's depressing

It’s a fun time to be a government employee, let me tell you.

My wife works at department of education, believe me we know

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

WE ARE STILL IN THIS.
Wipe your tears.
This is the difficult business of hope and defying expectation.
We do not give up.
We run through the tape.

Y’all aren’t allowed to throw in the towel until I do. 😉

Big breath. Locked in. Let’s do this.

‪🖤🤍🏳️‍⚧️Dru🏳️‍⚧️🤍🖤‬ ✧@bXXXXX✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
·
36m
The Democratic Party is shit. There’s no tears, just anger. Angry that the people in charge are at best inept dipshits that purposely don’t listen to what Americans actually want…but more likely they’re actively enabling the wealthy to rob our country blind (cuz they’re also wealthy) Fuck them

Dru otm.

The major reason not to give up is that government is the single most powerful force in society. It controls lawmaking, taxation, the military, the police, public schools, the courts, regulation of business and dozens of smaller jurisdictions.

As Alfred has often pointed out, the current incarnation of the Democratic party may be too feckless and corrupt to accomplish what's needed, but the two-party system is so entrenched that it is easier and simpler to shoulder your way into control of one the parties than to organize an alternative party. That's what the far right did with the Republicans. It requires infiltrating the party at the local level and most local party organizations are weak enough that it wouldn't take much to crawl into the nearly empty shell and take it over like a hermit crab. What's usually missing are the people willing to do the necessary work, even when the required number of people would be relatively small.

That's what the far right did with the Republicans.

I think this involved a fair amount of death threats as well.

And the aid and comfort of friendly billionaires.

Yup. We're doomed like the Weimar Republic. Still, I'm deluded enough to see value in trying to hold back the deluge as long as possible.

It requires infiltrating the party at the local level

Fwiw I don't really think this is the main part of what the far-right interest groups did to the GOP. Some of that, sure, but honestly our local GOP chapter here is still mostly made up of pre-Trump old-schoolers, who have largely batted away power grabs by the more obvious kooks. They didn't do it at the local party level, they did it via right-wing media and well-funded primary challenges to anyone who bucked whatever their pet interest is (abortion, guns, school vouchers, etc ). Over several decades they made each of those a litmus test for Republican candidates, so that now when someone wants to run they have to produce that list of pre-checked boxes. And they get rewarded for doing so by support from those outside organizations, all that dark money etc.

It's not a playbook that left-wing groups can duplicate, exactly, but there are still important lessons in it. I'm not saying don't focus on local and state parties, they are still important to varying degrees, but that's a pretty weak infrastructure and even controlling it will only get you so far. The bigger play is to drive the agenda, and that mostly isn't set by state and local parties.

otm

I won't and can't despair.

Yeah, I think the GOP took over a lot of local offices by nationalizing the elections too. It didn't work where I live, but I noticed GOP candidates for local offices running on national issues that they would have no involvement in.

I think state and local level control could be important as a way to sway the DC people, but also as a test case for policies in that agenda. The biggest reason the Dems can't replicate the GOP strategy is that the goals are different. Dems/progressives theoretically want to achieve something and that usually means coming up with a policy fix that might succeed or it might fail. GOP only has to roll back a few things their varying levels of membership don't like.

Look, I respect most of your perspectives here barring a few, and I just need to say this:

Hope does not make you virtuous or better than those who despair.

And I do know that those who have hope don’t think this, I just needed to write it out for myself.

Hope's not a virtue in and of itself — there are situations where it's essentially delusional and counterproductive — but neither is a pessimism or cynicism that styles itself as "clear-eyed" or "realistic" or whatever. When it comes to socio-political-economic matters in particular, we know from historical experience that things can get better, just as they can get worse. The value of hope to me is in providing some level of motivation to try to make things better. Hope isn't a necessary precondition for that, anger and despair can also prompt action, but I find it helpful.

AOC has been cozying up to Pelosi for ages. I can’t take this lip service bullshit seriously, and I will never donate to this party again

I think you probably have never donated anything to the democrats before and never will in the future. You have repeatedly indicated that you don't care about the stakes of all of this, just in lighting a fire

Please stop pretending you know a thing about me. I donated several hundred dollars in the last cycle. My partner even phone banked for Kamala. Attacking me instead of this awful system and the horrible people running the DNC accomplished absolutely nothing

I absolutely care about the stakes, despite not living in the States. My mother would’ve died in 1991 had she not been able to get an abortion in California. Seriously, your flippant remark is incredibly out of line

sorry beamish, I really don't know a thing about you except what you post here, but I just think some of your comments are inflammatory and deserve push back

Dan S otm, and u have nothing to apologize for, beamish is one of the site's absolute worst posters and should be permabanned

Giving to the DNC is a total dud. We highly favor targeting our political contributions to state & local candidates first, and give sometimes to our US senators and US reps. I know the DNC will scrape off a portion of anything we give to our state's Democrats in Congress, but that's still 100% better than funding the DNC directly. It lets my reps spend less time begging big donors on the phone and more time working on issues.

Having been diagnosed with pertussis/whooping cough yesterday (effects are relatively mild at age 42 and I’m generally in good health, but still a f-ing nightmare–get your booster!) I just want to say that any idiot senator who cozies up to RFK Jr or who contributes to public scepticism of vaccines for political gain (so what if some infants suffer!) should rot in hell. These people are ghouls.

i swear every time i open this thread you guys are having the same tired argument re: hope/despair/optimism/pessimism. can’t you just agree on the gramsci quote and move on?

US politics is a scab that we can't stop picking at, even though we know it makes things worse.

too many virtue signalers posting

lol, lmao: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/democrats-playbook-beat-republicans-2-years-work-now/story?id=116846803

Democrats have a plan to take back power in Washington back from Republicans in two years: work with them now.

Democrats, who are already planning their comeback after being swept out of power in Washington last month, have said they'll oppose President-elect Donald Trump and his allies when their values collide but are open to cooperation on a range of issues, including immigration, federal spending and entitlements.

...

"In politics, it's always the right move to extend a hand," said Jared Leopold, a Democratic strategist and former DGA staffer. "And if somebody chooses to slap you in the face instead, you better make sure you catch it on camera."

Yes I remember Mitch McConnell following the same playbook

jfc

Democrats have become the Paul Schaefer character from Spinal Tap

Easy mistake, they misread "Do not pre-comply" as "Donuts! Pre-comply."

Having been diagnosed with pertussis/whooping cough yesterday

I'm 99% positive I had it in June/July and I felt like I was going to fucking die, I coughed so hard my entire torso/chest were covered in bruises....I hope it stays mild for you.

"And if somebody chooses to slap you in the face instead, you better make sure you catch it on camera."

*Deeply slaps Democratic Party in the face and catches it on camera

Take out the middleman

Just thinking about the East German “opposition” parties for no reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Front_of_the_German_Democratic_Republic?wprov=sfti1#

Wake me up when we have Democrats with a fucking spine and take a page from the Republican playbook. Don’t they get that the Obama “nice guy” schtick didn’t work?

It's like they're taking Alan Colmes as their model. Protest, but not too much, and accept that you're always going to lose — and in return, you get a cushy job with a nice salary.

Hasn't their entire strategy been to attack Trump?

That was before he won. Now their strategy is to roll over, wet themselves and show throat.

see also: media, corporate ceos

I just feel like we hear this every time they lose - "The problem is they don't have a spine!" Maybe the problem is they don't have a platform.

it'd be cool if they had either. republicans sure as shit didn't have a platform

C'mon now, being hateful and enriching the worst billionaires on earth is a platform, even if it's a terrible one.

Members of Congress already earn more than 94% of Americans, and have added a pay raise for themselves in their budget.

The federal minimum wage hasn’t changed from $7.25 per hour since 2009.

The tipped minimum wage hasn’t changed since $2.13 per hour since 1991.

— Melanie D'Arrigo (@DarrigoMelanie) December 18, 2024

That tweet is in response to the continuing resolution bill containing language allowing for an increase in Congressional salaries

xp Trump offered people specific things, even if they were bullshit. He offered to deport immigrants, end DEI policies, stop the schools from turning your kids trans, lower grocery prices, lower energy prices, etc. He found things that bothered segments of people, amplified their resentments, showed that he heard them, and offered "solutions."

Obviously this is not the formula for Democrats, but I did not hear the Democrats offering much except "we are not Trump" "we are better than this" "we are the party of decency," etc. Stuff that is not all that appealing or exciting and disproportionately lands either with people in one of the targeted groups who feel unsafe under Trump or with liberals for whom life is mostly ok so that they feel safer voting on moral virtue.

Senators and Reps have made $174,000 a year since 2009

I really don't care if we pay senators and reps more, I just think we should raise the minimum wage.

epublicans sure as shit didn't have a platform

The republican platform was unspoken, implicit, and very obvious: we're going back to the good old days where the boss was always a white man who could ruin you and destroy your family if you talked back. That was god's plan for all of us because god was a white man, too.

If the centrist Dems and progressive Dems and the House and Senate leadership Dems can’t agree on a strategy, then maybe the progressive Dems via the progressive caucus need to figure out how to get messaging out regarding what they oppose and what they support . I like this J. Bouie opinion column “What do Democrats Need to do? Act like an Opposition Party “

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/18/opinion/democrats-trump-opposition.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

The continuing resolution budget bill does not include raising the minimum wage

The federal minimum wage hasn’t changed from $7.25 per hour since 2009.

my genius idea for what i would do if i were "the democratic party"

in the same way that i associate the geico insurance company with a talking lizard and 15 second comedy bits that occasionally make my nose go "hmph!", rather than associating them with being an insurance company which balances how badly people suffer vs how badly they want to make more money, the democratic party should be calling for a $20 federal minimum wage, and people should associate the entire party with a giant increase in minimum wage that would help a bunch of people. then, they can conduct their self-owning "take a picture of me kissing bi-partisan ass" routine with republicans, and negotiate down to $15 minimum wage so that the wealthiest voters of the democratic party can pat themselves on the back for being reasonable

they should also tie the fed minimum wage to inflation so that we don't have to go 15 years without an increase in wages, as if the ordeal of paying for the costs of living hadn't changed since 2009

Also re the CR budget funding—

For the second straight year, President Biden and the Democrats are poised to sacrifice a significant chunk of one of their biggest accomplishments: funding for the IRS to go after wealthy tax cheats. With the latest maneuver, more than 90 percent of the money invested to scale up IRS auditing and oversight could be gone before it can even be used. Yet again, Democrats seem to have been outplayed by Republican leadership.

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-12-18-democrats-allow-more-IRS-funding-fade-away/

Also re the CR budget funding—

For the second straight year, President Biden and the Democrats are poised to sacrifice a significant chunk of one of their biggest accomplishments: funding for the IRS to go after wealthy tax cheats. With the latest maneuver, more than 90 percent of the money invested to scale up IRS auditing and oversight could be gone before it can even be used. Yet again, Democrats seem to have been outplayed by Republican leadership.

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-12-18-democrats-allow-more-IRS-funding-fade-away/

I just feel like we hear this every time they lose - "The problem is they don't have a spine!" Maybe the problem is they don't have a platform.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, December 18, 2024 12:16 PM (one hour ago)

I think the bipartisanship thing combines both problems! If their 2024 platform was "trump = death of democracy" and now they're signalling they're ready to cooperate with him/his party, then they are both spineless and their platform, such as it was, turns out to have been completely hollow.

xp
($15 min wage was in the 2024 democratic party platform)

(i suppose the reason democrats don't talk more loudly about it is that in 2021 they tried it but our friends

Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire voted against proceeding, though the tally remains open. So did two close Biden allies, Chris Coons and Tom Carper of Delaware. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with the Senate Democrats, also opposed it.

xp Trump offered people specific things, even if they were bullshit. He offered to deport immigrants, end DEI policies, stop the schools from turning your kids trans, lower grocery prices, lower energy prices, etc. He found things that bothered segments of people, amplified their resentments, showed that he heard them, and offered "solutions."

I feel like the tariffs fell into this category, China hadn't been paying their way and soon they would bel. It made intuitive sense, and he elaborated at length about it over a period of time. It was a central part of his message for an extended period of time

it seems like the only way for Democrats to hold on to seats in the Senate is to back candidates who are not really Democrats, they'll support some very basic things but they are otherwise against the entire Democratic platform. Makes promising anything a bit foolish because they clearly aren't prepared to deliver.

worth noting that the main way Trump plans to deliver thing is by breaking the law

That Jamelle Bouie column is excellent.

Ben Winkler who is running for DNC head appeared on Fox News and tweeted this

A ton of voters only get their news about Democrats…from Republicans. To fight back, we should build up independent progressive media, reach out to voters who don’t watch political news—AND go on offense on conservative outlets.

That’s why I went on Fox News. Break the bubble. pic.twitter.com/fQMXtWWc5N

— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) December 18, 2024

i liked his little laugh when he mentioned the people making less than $50K a year having trouble buying groceries. $50K - wow, must be hard to buy groceries at that level - the knowing hmmm hmm!! makes me think that he's been in a household that was out of bread. out of bread! goddamn! i know right but yes out of even bread, at $50K a year

this guy gets it

ditch all of these fuckers

⚡️SPECIAL EDITION

TRUMP CANNONBALLS INTO THE GOVERNMENT FUNDING FIGHT, tanking Johnson's massive CR plan https://t.co/IPGUebgo0I

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) December 18, 2024

Obviously governing competency isn’t Trump’s strong suit but this is not really the ideal time to force a shutdown. The Democrats are fucked for two years, you own everything that happens until at least 2026!

Musk wants a shutdown until J20.

Trump and Musk both complained about the budget cr but of course gave no specifics.

xp to rob :

a dem platform, completely hollow? i’m shocked, shocked!

Fani Willis disqualified, georgia trump case probably over I assume

it would be good to see this case play out even if Trump himself is removed from it, but not looking likely right now

i'm sorry, i'm just trying to make sense of what happened re: government shutdown part 452/ ??

trump's last minute demand is...to eliminate the debt ceiling? and...he is threatening republicans with primaries if they don't eliminate the debt ceiling? and this is to keep democrats from holding the government hostage? which is exactly what the republicans did...*checks* 451 times before? am i reading this right?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/12/19/trump-debt-limit-shutdown/

President-elect Donald Trump has stunned lawmakers in Washington by calling for the suspension — or outright elimination — of the federal borrowing limit, introducing an explosive new demand into last-minute negotiations over averting a government shutdown this weekend.

In social media posts and interviews on Wednesday and Thursday, Trump called on congressional Republicans to lift the debt ceiling, a law that limits how much money the federal government can borrow.

The cap is currently suspended until Jan. 1, 2025, under a bipartisan deal struck last year. The Treasury Department can use what it calls “extraordinary measures” to finance new expenditures without borrowing beyond the limit. That would probably cover the government until May or June, though nobody can say for sure. Failure to raise the debt ceiling after that would result in a default of government debt, which would throw the U.S. and global economies into chaos.

In an interview with Fox News Digital on Thursday, Trump threatened primaries against Republican lawmakers who refuse to cooperate with repeal of the debt limit.

“Anybody that supports a bill that doesn’t take care of the Democrat quicksand known as the debt ceiling should be primaried and disposed of as quickly as possible,” Trump said.

Trump even went as far as pushing for the permanent repeal of the national borrowing limit. Democrats have long called for abolishing the cap, saying Republicans have used the limit as a weapon to force them to agree to spending cuts. Republicans have traditionally supported keeping the debt limit in place as a check on federal spending, although the limit bans borrowing, not spending. The government typically borrows to pay for spending that Congress and the White House have already enacted into law.

On Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump said of the government spending deal: “Can anyone imagine passing it without either terminating, or extending, the Debt Ceiling guillotine coming up in June?”

i'm reminded of AOC relaying something that Nancy Mace told her quite a while ago, while justifying a complete 180 on something: "it doesn't matter, it's all just points on the board". Hypocrisy is to be expected.

oh yeah, it was this: "AOC recently posted on Bluesky that when she privately confronted Mace about the lies she told about her and January 6, Mace responded glibly, “Whatever. You know it’s a game, just points on the board.”

That might be hilarious if the consequences weren't real. It's got "why do you keep smashing my fist with your face?" energy

In the new regime, everything bad will simply be rebranded as "the Democrat ____."

Food spoiled? Democrat bacteria. Sniffling? You must have Democrat flu. Splinter in your foot? It's a Democrat splinter.

Pre-blame. That way you don't have to do anything. As long as your problem can be tarred with the Democrat brush, when you don't get it fixed you can say it's because of those darn Democrats.

forget it, jake. it's...

it's..., uh

forget it jake

Again, the Fran Lebowitz quote becomes the truest thing ever said about the man:

“Everyone says he is crazy – which maybe he is – but the scarier thing about him is that he is stupid. You do not know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump. You just don’t.”

Things seem to be going well

This is the lull before the storm. Enjoy it, because there's no sense in buying trouble ahead of time.

Funny that a Republican is afraid the Dems will use the debt ceiling as a bargaining tool, which they have never done and never will because "norms".

I've been seeing/hearing a lot of talk about how the GOP will have to completely own the many, many fuck-ups that are surely coming down the pike over the next two years as if it's some kind of silver lining...buuuuuut, in terms of public sentiment, literally all it will take to shift the blame is for Trump to get on his stupid little social media platform and tell his low-info base that the fuck-ups are all the Dems' fault. They aren't gonna let any tedious bullshit like facts get in the way of believing what they're told to believe.

the people who actually decide elections aren't on Truth Social they're the people who don't really follow anything and generally have no idea how things work, they just notice when things get worse, which they are all the time

yeah no sorry Trump owns this

i don't believe for a second think people will think otherwise

Narrator: People thought otherwise

Well but also there's just the general erosion of critical faculties to consider plus the fact that I don't expect mainstream media to really push back all that hard on any quasi-official statements, everyone's tired and a majority of the fatigued seem willing (if not outright eager!) to just bend the knee to the new status quo this time. Historical precedent has taught me to not feel super sanguine about any of this shit putting the slightest ding in his teflon coating.

saw this on bluesky but Maggie Haberman was on CNN last night saying her sources were saying Repubs are concerned w how much sway Musk has over Trump

he's not a "good" politician and congress is not going to suddenly get more functional

not to mention Trump is owning the shutdown

Chris Hayes had a good point about this a bit ago, people forget Dubya had the same sort of aura Trump does now, the man could do no wrong in some folks' eyes, but a lot of people actually did turn against him in his 2nd term. i think folks may be underestimating how quickly he's going to become a lame duck

Republican concerns carry roughly as much weight as their thoughts and prayers, do you really think these spineless lickspittles will do/say anything to aggrieve their regent

I'm disinclined at this point to put faith in anyone trying to draw parallels between Trump and any former US president/politician. We seem to be in sui generis territory here. Maybe we have been since 2016 and I'm only just realizing it.

Rand Paul is already dreaming about making Musk speaker

look things are as good right now as they're ever gonna be for this administration, all this capitulation by the media and Congress and big business is gonna look insane in retrospect once this reveals itself to be a total disaster on every front, which it undoubtably will be. the GOP fucked up a good thing by winning.

if you see a path for the Republicans getting better press (not to mention functioning better) I'm all ears

Trumps spokespersons reminding everyone he is the actual president not Musk

look things are as good right now as they're ever gonna be for this administration, all this capitulation by the media and Congress and big business is gonna look insane in retrospect once this reveals itself to be a total disaster on every front, which it undoubtably will be. the GOP fucked up a good thing by winning.

^^^^^^

(except for the courts, which are fucked)

this is the fucking new york times, straight up saying Musk is lying. things will not suddenly turn around

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/us/politics/elon-musk-politics.html

Dan Crenshaw
@DanCrenshawTX
I love you Elon but you need to take 5 seconds to check your sources before highlighting bottom feeders looking for clicks.

"i love you elon"

pathetic

Maybe Trump, Musk and Peter Thiel will declare themselves a Triumvirate.

i love you elon but i've chosen MAGA

Maybe Trump, Musk and Peter Thiel will declare themselves a Triumvirate.

― Grape Fired At Czar From Crack Battery (President Keyes), Thursday, December 19, 2024 1:33 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I encourage Thiel to continue making public appearances because I think that would very quickly take the bloom off his particular rose. Dude comes off like a severely malfunctioning Disney World animatronic

We’re having consecutive presidents who wear diapers people only see what they want to see

Rand Paul is already dreaming about making Musk speaker

If you have even the slightest glimmer of accelerationism in your heart, you absolutely want this to happen.

Musk would do it just so he could quit and be the X-Speaker of the House

Heyyyyooo

Yeesh the state we’re in if Dan Crenshaw is the voice of sanity.

the people who actually decide elections aren't on Truth Social they're the people who don't really follow anything and generally have no idea how things work, they just notice when things get worse, which they are all the time

What somehow trickles down and over to people who don't keep informed, is that Dems are responsible for all things that get worse and it's never the fault of that great businessman they have vague recollections of being on The Apprentice

The idea of the all powerful Trump Army that decides narratives and controls the opinions of the entire electorate remains ridiculous. He won a squeaker! Against a candidate who had to sub in for the fourth quarter because the (incredibly unpopular) starter was revealed to be a zombie.

Looking at the 2024 election and seeing Reagan-Mondale is nuts.

well Trump's 1st term started with him claiming he had the biggest inauguration crowd of all time, the entire right wing ethos right now is being mediocre and then crying that you don't get enough credit

Right wing men are always saying their things are bigger than they really are.

trump will get the blame when everything falls apart, as he basically did in 2020; our luck is that he can't run again in another 4 years. whether republicans in general will also get the blame for shit falling apart remains to be seen.

It's really just a question of how much damage he can do before his political capital is completely drained. He's eagerly burning it a month before his term starts, which is not a terrible development.

Apparently there's a new spending deal that sounds to me like the Republicans are voluntarily giving up power/leverage and convincing themselves they're geniuses for doing it:

President-elect Donald Trump endorsed a new Republican deal Thursday afternoon to avert a government shutdown and raise the nation’s debt limit for two years, after sinking the bipartisan agreement Speaker Mike Johnson originally struck with Democrats.

"All Republicans, and even the Democrats, should do what is best for our Country and vote 'YES' for this Bill, TONIGHT!" Trump wrote.

The news caught House Democrats by surprise, and the caucus is expected to meet Thursday afternoon to discuss the new deal. Johnson will almost certainly need their votes to pass the bill, text of which was released shortly after Trump expressed approval.

The House is expected to vote on the plan as early as 6 p.m. on Thursday, according to three Republicans, ahead of the government shutdown deadline Friday at midnight.

The plan Johnson is expected to put on the House floor would fund the government through March 14, just like the spending patch he agreed to with Democrats, and also includes the $110 billion disaster aid package mirroring that bipartisan negotiation. But the measure contains a straightforward extension of current "farm bill" policy for food and agriculture programs, along with a simple renewal of expiring health care policy, rather than making changes to those programs and adding new policy like overhauling rules for pharmacy benefit managers.

It seems like the Democrats are going to tell them to go fuck themselves, though...

Republicans are just pretending to give up power. Latest Republican CR bill includes language to extend the debt limit to just past the 2 year mark of the next Trump term, that way if the Dems regain the House in mid-terms Republicans will preserve their ability to play games with the debt limit. If Republicans really wanted to give up power they'd vote to get rid of the debt limit rule entirely.

Maga folks and the Washington Post both though are saying that Jeffries and Shumer put in the pay increase for Congress in the first bill, and they're spinning the new bill as an improvement for getting rid of "pork," but it's still not clear what is in second bill and what was dropped.

why would Democrats support this?

how much damage he can do before his political capital is completely drained

Trump doesn't play by those rules. Hell, he doesn't give a shit about legality, so why would he care about something as intangible as political capital? So long as he holds office he has incredible power. As yet there's no evidence the Republicans in Congress will push back at him over anything he does, aside from a few meaningless expressions of their 'concern' or 'alarm'. The well-being of the party or its future success or failure isn't even on his radar. He may officially be a lame duck, but in Trumpworld that just means he's a total loose cannon with nothing to lose. He'll start wilding until some force intervenes to mute him.

looks like they removed the provision returning RFK to DC. Elon is the fucking worst.

According to Punchbowl News, the deal would fund the government for the next three months

Unbelievable to read every time.

xxp

He clearly does not care about political capital, but it's still going to be much more difficult to get anything done if he's racing to piss off as many of his allies and supporters as possible.

Biden should not sign a two-year debt ceiling deal. That is bananas. Just tees up the ability for Republicans to have full control of appropriations even if Democrats take the house in the midterms. He should only do total elimination of the debt ceiling. That would be a capstone https://t.co/yajP4ZZRWs

— Lindsay Owens (@owenslindsay1) December 19, 2024

The provision returning rfk stadium from federal control to DC city control would allow the city to team up with billionaire Commanders nfl football owner to build a new stadium in DC rahter than stay in their current Md one. But as these deals always work, the billionaire owner will likely make DC pay for most of the stadium costs. Some have suggested Congress allow for building more affordable housing there on rfk site instead, but neither COngress nor the mayor are excited about that.

Elon was on X saying the bill included funds to build the stadium, which it didn't. It was just giving the land back to DC so they could consider bids etc. I would have liked to have seen what the Harris Group etc would have proposed and what amount DC would consider ponying up. Harris isn't Kroenke so you're not gonna get a SoFi deal but would have been interested to see. Might still happen but the pointless blockage is annoying.

House Republicans have abandoned an effort to include reforms to pharmacy benefit managers in an end-of-year bill to fund the federal government.

Congressional leaders had reached a deal to rein in prescription drug middlemen earlier this week, but the larger package it was tacked onto fell apart following backlash from conservatives and top advisers to President-elect Trump. Instead, lawmakers are planning to pass a three-month government funding bill with extensions for basic public health programs and telehealth flexibilities ahead of a Friday deadline.

https://www.statnews.com/2024/12/19/republican-government-funding-bill-pbm-reform-doctor-pay-shutdown/

Another reason for Dems to vote no. Republicans abandoned a bipartisan pharmacy reform provision