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StarTopic US Politics |ST| The Kyrsten Sinema-tic Universe

I would have liked the original version of the bill, for starters. I would like less funding to the military, I would like reversal of Trump sanctions, foreign military interventions, and immigration policies. I would like housing aid that isn't primarily going towards the people who are driving housing costs in the first place, and for people to be able to afford to go to school and get sick without getting helplessly and debt. And I would like all the people in charge of rising airline prices to go to jail.

What has improved since Biden took office?
I wouldn’t have said anything has improved.

However, certainly disaster was completely avoided, in the form of another Great Depression. The American Rescue plan literally saved our floundering economy, it helped curb child poverty, and it really helped everything.

My town was actually on the verge of bankruptcy due to Covid, along with our school district. Without those funds, my wife would have been fired and let go from budget cuts. Thousands of people would have been laid off in my town too, and I know that so many towns were on the same boat. Parents in general, are much better off, and the decrease in dependency of corporations has caused an increase in wages, including my own(even though I made okay money to begin with).

Biden also led a mass vaccination program, that has worked really well to quell the virus, so much so that really only antvaxxers are dying from the thing.

Overall, the fact that we are asking for even more, is astounding(and we should ask for even more). If Trump and the Republicans were in office, we would be in a Great Depression 2.0, with likely lower wages, towns and people would be bankrupt, with an ineffectual business driven vaccination plan. Biden has done quite a bit to stave off disaster. Now, we should expect more, especially with Biden and the student loans. But, come on. A lot of stuff has improved since Biden took office, and he was certainly better than the alternative.
 
However, certainly disaster was completely avoided, in the form of another Great Depression. The American Rescue plan literally saved our floundering economy, it helped curb child poverty, and it really helped everything.
This is still coming. It has been inevitable since Bill Clinton got rid of all the stuff we did to end the last Great Depression, and there is currently nothing planned to bring these programs back. I honestly don't see any improvements, just the same that is now worse because people who previously spoke out are now defending it.
 
I'm not gonna name anyone (here or elsewhere), but when people like me, who are impacted by inactions of the democratic parties that are in place, easily handwave "Well, this and that helped me", or "well, did you REALLY want Trump to win" as a means to deflect criticism, you are inherently part of the problem.

I'm disabled. I can't work. There's been more and more radio silence in recent months regarding the disabled and the amount of stuff that would've benefited me in the recent plan has been effectively stripped out. I also can't begin to tell you how my Medicaid has been privatized and I now have less options available to me to see hospitals, dentists, etc., because of various actions and ideas of "compromising" bills and stuff, both on the local and federal levels.

Yes, there is still some "nice" things in the bill, but it could've been a lot better and the fact roughly 7 or so democrats in Sentate are preventing anything from going through (with Manchin being the "fall" person, is the best way I can describe it), is not a good look.

Also, can I say this? It's nice to come from a point of privilege to not worry about some of this stuff when in one fell swoop, in-action can cost me my SSDI, Medicaid, and Medicare, especially if what happened in Virginia is a sign of things to come.

Also, by the way?

I can't get married without losing my SSDI, Medicare, and Medicaid. There was talk to address this awhile back but nothing has happened since then and it's effectively went radio silence. So yeah.

It's nice.
 
Centris Democrats are already blaming progressives for their defeat in Virginia like we had anything to do with it
Huh. If you call yourself a liberal, and you're eligible to vote in Virginia, but you didn't like McAuliffe, so you didn't vote or voted for Blanding instead, and McAuliffe loses by a slim margin (most obviously if McAuliffe + Blanding > Youngkin), then yeah, you'll have had a part to play in the reason that Youngkin will be Governor.

Elections are a zero sum game, and this is not any different on the right, except the right leans heavier to the far right than the left leans to the far left.
 
Huh. If you call yourself a liberal, and you're eligible to vote in Virginia, but you didn't like McAuliffe, so you didn't vote or voted for Blanding instead, and McAuliffe loses by a slim margin (most obviously if McAuliffe + Blanding > Youngkin), then yeah, you'll have had a part to play in the reason that Youngkin will be Governor.

Elections are a zero sum game, and this is not any different on the right, except the right leans heavier to the far right than the left leans to the far left.
What's the point of voting Democratic if they can't pass shit anyway.
 
To try not to be overrun with Nazis in leadership positions.
Well, very clearly that strategy of 'well at least we aren't Trumpists' isn't working, and that's 100% on the Dems. People don't owe them a vote just because they 'oppose' Republicans.
 
I really hope this is a wakeup call for democratic leadership, because this is just a small taste of what's to come in 2022. If they continue to be this ineffective, Republicans could end up winning in a landslide next year unless action is hastily taken.
 
Huh. If you call yourself a liberal, and you're eligible to vote in Virginia, but you didn't like McAuliffe, so you didn't vote or voted for Blanding instead, and McAuliffe loses by a slim margin (most obviously if McAuliffe + Blanding > Youngkin), then yeah, you'll have had a part to play in the reason that Youngkin will be Governor.

Elections are a zero sum game, and this is not any different on the right, except the right leans heavier to the far right than the left leans to the far left.
why wouldn't a liberal vote for McAuliffe?
 
why wouldn't a liberal vote for McAuliffe?
Ask the 20k of them voted for Blanding.

I this particular case it doesn't matter because between the two of them they don't have enough votes to beat Youngkin.

There's a term called vote splitting. A few times the republicans have actually set this up artificially. In that case it's called a ghost candidate.

Let's say you have a democrat and a republican, called Alex Rodriguez and Bob Smith. Bob Smith looks like he's going to lose by 1% of the votes. 50.5% to 49.5%. Bob pays $10k to a guy named Allen Rodriguez to also run. Allen files the paperwork to run (filled out by Bob), and then does nothing else. Liberal voters remember to vote for Rodriguez, but some of them can't remember if it's Allen or Alex and vote for Allen instead of Alex. At the end of the day, Bob gets 49.5% of the vote, Alex gets 48.5% of the vote, and Allen gets 2% of the vote. Bob wins.

That scenario has happened with independents and the green party enough naturally that some republicans (and maybe some democrats) are using it as an actual tactic. It happened in like 1 or 2 cases in Florida the last couple of years.

I'd love to see ranked choice voting make some headway just so that some of these strategies become ineffective.
 
Apparently a lot of voters would rather nazis than someone they mostly agree with.
You can't overcome far-right politics by being self-righteous. People do not have the will to go out to vote for no reason other than shoring up defenses. Democrats need to make people vote for them, not against others.

Honestly, the fact of Democrats nitpicking and saying "$1400 + $600" should have been the canary in the coal mine of how midterms would go.
 
I really hope this is a wakeup call for democratic leadership, because this is just a small taste of what's to come in 2022. If they continue to be this ineffective, Republicans could end up winning in a landslide next year unless action is hastily taken.
The action that needs to be taken to maintain democrat control (supply chain and gas prices) is going to be hard to get done in a year to the point of it being acceptable. Our only other real hope is Republicans being SO BAD that they tank themselves. Something like overturning Roe and watching all the states that have trigger laws against abortion when it does, but that's not something we should WANT to happen.

Republicans now sort of have a blueprint of what to do; run candidates that keep Trump at an arms length to appeal to independents and suburb moderates. Now will they actually follow that plan in 2022 when the cultists are on the rise in the party?

I think what this election told us most (beyond Terry being a bad candidate) is despite the polarization of the country, the pendulum is still in effect to some extent and the approval of the guy at the top is going to be a big factor. It's just nowhere near as pronounced when the party in power is only losing by a few points (Virginia) or outright winning narrowly (New Jersey, first Democrat incumbent win since 1977). I think that's something to be at least somewhat optimistic about in the sense that we'd be looking at landslide losses if this was the pre-Trump era. And a lot can change in a year, so we'll see what happens.
 
I don't think many of them would identify as liberals, unless there's like a poll I've seen saying otherwise. If you're super liberal you would vote for the Clinton guy yeah?
Yeah going by exit polls, McAulffie got 94% of the vote from liberals. What hurt him were moderates/independent voters
 
Quoted by: VHS
Yeah going by exit polls, McAulffie got 94% of the vote from liberals. What hurt him were moderates/independent voters
more indepth exit polls will be needed but seemingly it was a strong appeal to white non college educated suburban women that won Youngkin the election.
 
I think that the demographic shift for uneducated white women is primarily a damning indictment of the degradation of the country's education system than of any other factor.

A person should not need to go to college in order to develop critical thinking skills, but if they must then college needs to be far more accessible/affordable to prevent further national mental decline.
 
I think that the demographic shift for uneducated white women is primarily a damning indictment of the degradation of the country's education system than of any other factor.

A person should not need to go to college in order to develop critical thinking skills, but if they must then college needs to be far more accessible/affordable to prevent further national mental decline.
I really don't think that the solution is to assume that people who didn't vote for the Clinton guy just aren't smart enough.
 
I really don't think that the solution is to assume that people who didn't vote for the Clinton guy just aren't smart enough.
I think they watch a bunch of fox news. It's like the facebook of television. They go for maximum engagement by way of fear and outrage.
 
Quoted by: VHS
I think they watch a bunch of fox news. It's like the facebook of television. They go for maximum engagement by way of fear and outrage.
Yep, easier to engage them on culture war issues, they dont seem to have a working insight into why shortages are there/why gas prices are high, etc
 
I really don't think that the solution is to assume that people who didn't vote for the Clinton guy just aren't smart enough.
I'm not talking about their intelligence, but rather their ability to think critically regarding the information they consume.

For example, there are plenty of well-educated individuals that are vehemently anti-vaccine. The problem isn't what they know, but rather that they will accept such baseless theories at face value despite their knowledge.
 
Yep, easier to engage them on culture war issues, they dont seem to have a working insight into why shortages are there/why gas prices are high, etc
It's not even a question of intelligence of education, but a question of indoctrination. A lot of midwest relatives (from when I used to use facebook - I assume they're the same now) were very much "Team Republican" or "Team Trump". I am in no way "Team Democrat" or "Team Biden" except that I'm going to vote for whoever is most likely to win that most closely adheres to the values that I want to see presented, and at the end of the day in our system of voting it comes down to two candidates and any vote that's for someone outside of those two is basically wasted.

This is why I so much want to see ranked choice voting in place. I also deeply want to see the NPVIC enacted in order to take the structural advantage of the Electoral College taken away from the republicans who would be forced to come closer to the middle in order to have success in presidential elections.
 
This is what centrist Democrats thought was a sound strategy

This is not a winning argument at all as evidenced by it not winning. Technocratic centrists Liberalshate Trump for his violations of the rules of discourse. He's the class clown. You know who doesn't hate the class clown? Everyone else in the class.

The answer to right-wing populism is left-wing populism. You're never going to win the culture war coming across as the teacher's pet. You got to work with what people like about the Democrats. There is a left-wing populism that would have worked. They hate your boss as much as you do. They could have focused on raising the minimum wage or popular ideas. But nope go ahead and tell parents that they don't have any say and their kids education because you know better.

Democratic centrists don't want to do that though because they're as much a pawn of corporate interests as the mainstream Republicans are.

So the campaign that was run by centrists, headed by a centrist, using centrist points and asking anything that's popular with anyone wants to condemn the far left that wasn't even present.

No thank you.
 


I'm not expecting the Democrats to nominate some Marxist, military hating, police abolishing, bomb throwing anarcho-communist like me. I'm not even expecting them to nominate someone like Bernie Sanders. But can we at least not nominate some corporate backed company man that can promise absolutely nothing for the working class? His main appeal was that he wasn't Trump but he wasn't running against Trump. Yes he can say all the right things and knows how to speak properly and has some education but that's not what wins elections. That's not what people want.
 



Not looking good


The full paragraph from Politico reads:

Some White House advisers support further extending the relief to give the Education Department, which is charged with managing the $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio, more time to come up with a plan to ease borrowers back into repayment, according to people familiar with the discussions. But other advisers worry that continuing an emergency pandemic relief program into 2022 could undercut the administration’s messaging about the strength of the economic recovery.

The Twitter account snips the quote to make it appear like the situation is White House VS loan relief, when in reality the situation is reported as Education Department + White House advisors VS other White House advisors.

This kind of misrepresentation isn't a way to run a dialogue.
 
The full paragraph from Politico reads:



The Twitter account snips the quote to make it appear like the situation is White House VS loan relief, when in reality the situation is reported as Education Department + White House advisors VS other White House advisors.

This kind of misrepresentation isn't a way to run a dialogue.
This is a distinction without a difference. Presumably the white house advisors are the reason why the white house is restarting loan repayments in February, something Biden insisted will happen.

Surely the fact that there are other advisors rightfully pointing out that this is a bad idea makes the fact that they're doing it anyway worse, yeah?
 
Man, giving millions of Americans a verifiable paycut, all at once, after the economy was used to that amount sure is a great idea.

Even if you look at this through a mega-capitalist, really pro business perspective, this is an awful idea. Taking millions of dollars out of the economy for no other reason than posturing is beyond insane.
 
This is a distinction without a difference. Presumably the white house advisors are the reason why the white house is restarting loan repayments in February, something Biden insisted will happen.

Surely the fact that there are other advisors rightfully pointing out that this is a bad idea makes the fact that they're doing it anyway worse, yeah?

The quoted article is about a fight that happened in July about whether or not to extend relief into 2022. Back then it was the Department of Education, Congressional Democrats and the White House babyface faction with their arguments against the White House heel faction and their arguments. Relief was extended into 2022, that means the arguments for not extending relief into 2022 lost the fight.

A lack of proposals for another extension beyond February next year does not logically lead to the conclusion that the Education Department, Congressional Democrats and the White House now agree with concerns about political messaging.
 
January 4th is the new deadline for vaccine requirements in the workplace via OSHA.

 
Listening to bits and pieces of the Tucker Carlson Jan 6th documentary and its obvious why so many American's are so brain washed with complete and utter nonsense.
 
It seems that the procedural vote on the JLVRA and Virginia actually shooked some moderates. Carper just flipped on his filibuster stand in relation to nuking it to pass For The People/Freedom to Vote & the JLVRA.




Tom Carper said:
I’m an optimist by nature, so I want to hold out hope that a compromise can be reached. But I cannot look the other way if total obstruction continues. I do not come to this decision lightly, but it has become clear to me that if the filibuster is standing in the way of protecting our democracy then the filibuster isn’t working for our democracy.

Earlier this year, my friend Sen. Angus King, an Independent from Maine, wrote that “if forced to choose between a Senate rule and democracy itself, I know where I will come down.” And so do I.

No barrier — not even the filibuster — should stand in the way of our sacred obligation to protect our democracy.
 
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill is on the way to the White House. Meanwhile, the rule in relation to the passage of Build Back Better also passed the House.

 
I got into an argument with someone on next door about critical race theory, I just find this incredibly frustrating.

I hate that I get suckered into writing paragraphs of responses to reactionaries only for them to reward my effort with no effort. I'll talk about why systemic racism actually exists and that the moral panic about Critical Race Theory is being organized by fascist news grifters. I'll post links to videos. And the only response I get is "Democrat lies" and "lol triggered?!"

It's extremely frustrating.

It would be like if a chimpanzee was running around the house knocking over furniture and smearing poop and I am following him around cleaning it up and in the time it took me to clean up one mess, he has made several more.

It's a Gish Gallop. It takes far more effort to debunk the lie that appeals to kneejerk received wisdom than it does to make all the lies in the first place.
 
Our Resident Commissioner, who is part of the GQP and is already touting the money the island will receive because of BIB, gave a rundown of what the island will receive in a 5 year span:

- Overall: $2.265B

Divided in:
  • $900M for streets and roads
  • $225M for bridges
  • $456M for public transport
  • $13.6M for EV Charging Stations
  • $100M for broadband*
  • $2M to combat forest fires
  • $12M for cyberattack protection
  • $455M to garantize clean water**
  • $102M for airports.

* Puerto Rico already has an existing broadband network via PREPA's grid, but its lack of use has led to it being non functional. So those $100M should go entirely to fixing i

** This when divided among the 5 years would lead to a 33% increase in the government funding of PR's Water Company (Autoridad de Acueductos y Alcantarillados/AAA).

 
looks like leverage for improving the other bill is gone now
Well i don't think it was going to be improved. Just trying to get Machin to agree to vote for it as is. They've taken so many things out of it as is, i would assume that was a requirement for getting Manchin to sign onto it so nothing is going back into it.
 
Well i don't think it was going to be improved. Just trying to get Machin to agree to vote for it as is. They've taken so many things out of it as is, i would assume that was a requirement for getting Manchin to sign onto it so nothing is going back into it.
This is the most likely scenario. The only leverage the House actually had left was holding the BIB, until Manchin and Sinema agreed to BBB in the Senate. However, that rapidly change after that Manchin presser on Monday.

Though for adding things, that is now up to the Senate and how it deals the outstanding issues identified by House Dems:

- Paid Leave is to be added in the House, though it depends on Gillibrand continuing her talks with Manchin to see if it survives the Senate

- Some type of immigration reform, aside of the $100 million to fix the current system, may be added, but then depends on the Parliamentarian in the Senate. Even more with more moderates outside of Manchin and Sinema being against overturning her on anything.

- The Rx reform compromised was agreed in the House, and Sinema was fine with it. So it only has to survive the Senate and the final vote-a-rama.

- SALT cap and if Bernie can limit how much they up that.
 
Medicaid expansion was so terribly implemented that it basically allowed Republicans to run on how bad it was, and Democrats willingly write the same critical flaw into the one thing this new bill ostensibly does. I can't tell if they're really stupid and think annoying people posting "well Biden passed it, your state government is to blame!" on Facebook is enough for 2022/2024, or if they just don't care at all.
 
And people wonder why folks don't vote Democratic anymore.

Clown country.
I mean, it’s probably easier to just point to my state of West Virginia. We had 50+ years of full democratic control run the state into the ground and the last 20 of republican control have carried on that time-honored tradition.

It’s not like we haven’t fielded decent candidates either (like with the WV Can’t Wait campaign) they just end up getting stonewalled by the state Democratic Party as they actively support whatever dogshit candidate they’ve scraped off their shoe that cycle.

The same can be extended to most of the country, I’m sure.
 
Medicaid expansion was so terribly implemented that it basically allowed Republicans to run on how bad it was, and Democrats willingly write the same critical flaw into the one thing this new bill ostensibly does. I can't tell if they're really stupid and think annoying people posting "well Biden passed it, your state government is to blame!" on Facebook is enough for 2022/2024, or if they just don't care at all.
Its like they sabotage these bills on purpose. And now republicans are just gonna run the left of Democrats just like with Obamacare. Such a joke man
 
Biden's signature agenda is officially dead, and Joe Manchin killed it on Fox News without telling anyone before hand. We still have the ending of child tax credits, worsening covid, and student loans to look forward to. Things aren't looking good.
 
Jayapal and the cpc got played. Don't take moderates words for shit. They will always stab you in the back. You need to get something in writing and writing in this case would've been passing BBB first. Hopefully a valueable lesson was learned but knowing the dems probably not lol
 


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