Again I ask: what do you suggest they do that they cannot do from Canada?
Charapaso
joined 10 months ago
...or now is the time to leave while/if you can. Maybe they've decided they can fight the regime more effectively from outside the country. That they can use their voice and experience unburdened by fear they'll be arrested. What do you suggest they do that they can't from Canada?
Truly, I can't fault people for leaving. Especially people that are being targeted. I'm a scientist that works fighting against climate change, so I get it.
"This deal is getting worse all the time!" is the hallway one, but I thought the same as you!
Well sure, the Democrats could kill the filibuster with a simply majority (if they could get 51 senators on board) but they filibuster a lot as well, to prevent some Republican legislation. So I can see why they're too pragmatic - or cowardly - to remove it. Not the best source/graph, but a source: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-are-so-many-democrats-considering-ending-the-filibuster/
As for the parliamentarian: they haven't been removed in a while, and the one before that also served for a pretty long time...I think the Democrats (again, cowardly or pragmatically) are simply trying not to escalate and make the parliamentarian a puppet of the current simple majority. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentarian_of_the_United_States_Senate
I'm all in favor of nuking the filibuster, mind you: which would make the whole budget reconciliation thing a moot point. but I can understand the desire for some in the party to retain it as a tool. Fat lot of good it's doing us now, of course.
the Democrats technically controlled the chamber.
Correct - technically, but not practically - because they absolutely can't get anything substantial done with the Republicans and right-wing Democrats, as they didn't have a filibuster proof supermajority.
However, there was one brief moment when Biden’s party had a 60th vote, which occurred after Senator Al Franken resigned and was replaced with Senator Tina Smith in 2018
That...just isn't true though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/115th_United_States_Congress They had at most 47 votes, right? Also...recall who was president in 2018. Certainly not enough congressional control to override the inevitable veto.
At best their ‘accomplishments’ you mention were limited, while vastly more dammage was done in other fields.
Yes, I wholeheartedly agree that many of the accomplishments were limited. I'm not saying they are going to save us, and while I want to wrest control from the right-wing leadership in the Democratic party, I'm not terribly optimistic that it'll happen in my lifetime. IMHO we need more coordination and cooperation on the Left to organize enough to do what the Tea Party did on the Right with the GOP...the major difference is that the folks in power in the GOP weren't ideologically opposed to the Tea Party, unlike the corporate Dems v. the "Actual Left", so maybe that's a fool's errand, especially given the power structures in place, and the inherently anti-democratic system of government re: SCOTUS, Senate, Electoral College, etc.
Look: I don't think we disagree all that much: I'm just trying to acknowledge nuance and correct misinformation. So...what do you suggest we do about the Democrats being at best speed bumps to real progress?
When they have a supermajority, like they had not long ago, they are in trouble.
The last true supermajority I'm aware of only lasted 72 days, back in 2009. It's when the Fair Pay act was signed, Affordable Care Act, and a few different attempts to reform Wall Street. They were certainly not as life-changing as I'd like, but I'm admittedly pretty far to the Left of the average US voter.
The even stronger supermajority before that was in 1965, and that got the creation of Medicare & Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act, Freedom of Info Act, etc.
The Dems are a weak centrist party, and the leadership is center-right at best, but even so - those two times where they had a supermajority in the Senate gave us some good to at least quasi-good stuff. I'm totally on board for bashing the Democrats, but it's hard to convey the amount of damage the truly undemocratic Senate has done over the decades, and I think we can't avoid the reality that there was a lot that got done in that brief period when the Republicans couldn't stop them. The ability to block legislation in the Senate is just incredible. Things just can't get passed, unless it's something the Republicans will agree to - so it's far easier for shitty stuff to get passed. Unfortunately, there are enough right wing democrats that will go along with the shitty stuff the Republicans propose, in no small part because their constituents actually like it. We're losing the propaganda war, because those with capital have far more power to wield.
So there's a lot of problems to fix - deeply undemocratic institutions like the Senate and the Electoral College, the entirety of the GOP, weakass right-wing Democrats, and the voters themselves. Unfortunately, yeah...the interests of Capital have intervened and made sure to cripple Education and control the media landscape, so to get back to my main point, since I'm losing the thread here - I'm agreed that the Democrats are shit, but we can't ignore reality that when they've had actual full control of the Federal government, things were at least going in a decent direction.
Thank you for a good reply, but I'll still push back on your general conclusion. They can do nearly all of that from Canada, the only exception that they won't face arrest for doing so.
The larger point: I think "slightest bit" is way underselling what we've seen over the last couple months. Attacks on the academic systems, legal systems, and of course on the most vulnerable people in society. I think we're already at "really hairy", and waiting to "flee" until the administration is executing professors in the street is too late.
To make a different point: not everyone can do their best resisting while under serious pressure. Not everyone is a fighter. We need medics, we need logistics, we need reporters, we need people abroad supporting us. If they can't handle the pressure, but will keep up the flight from afar, then more power to them. It doesn't necessarily make them cowards, but cognizant of their own needs and how they can best help. Maybe they are fleeing out of cowardice, but the point I'm trying to make is that it isn't a given.