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Wake-up Call: Democrats could easily lose the White House and Senate next year
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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A question to American Lemmy users: from what I can tell you are Democrats for the vast majority : would you consider voting for a Republican president if you aligned with his ideas, or if the Democrat candidate was an unredeemable piece of shit? The two party system makes zero sense to me because it doesn't seem, at first glance, that they're a huge overlap, people are not willing to go to the other side often, it seems. .. what's the point of having debates and stuff then?
Before the Tea Party movement in the Republican party, yes I definitely could have been convinced to vote for a Republican candidate. I was actually intending to vote for John McCain for president because at that time in history, both parties really did still have their crazy branches, but the relatively rational adults who knew how to compromise for the good of the country still ran the show, and I was genuinely concerned that Obama didn't have enough political experience to be president.
Then McCain nominated Sarah Palin for his Vice President. That was such a pandering, cowardly, caving to the will of the utterly ignorant, insane extremists in the Republican party move that I voted for Obama. And then the entire Republican party got so mad that a black guy was president that they collectively lost their whole fucking minds.
Republicans no longer want to govern. They want to break things and stay in power and that's it. That's their entire platform. There's nothing to debate because they literally aren't even trying to DO anything useful. Their entire political position right now is "do the opposite of what Democrats want." They have nothing to vote FOR. People who vote Republican right now are doing so only because they're voting against the bogeymen in their own heads.
That was John McCain's single greatest mistake. Actually I'd bet it was the national GOP party that forced it. In any case, I really thought that they believed they found the magic sauce and could get both the Tea Party yahoos and the establishment as well.
Before 2016 I was definitely in the camp of looking at both major parties as well as any third parties. I was voting for who I thought was the best despite whatever party they were in.
However, 2016 really opened my eyes to what the Republican party is. They are a party that isn't allowed to have different ideas. You follow the party line and do what you are told or you will be kicked out. Even republicans I thought might have cared for this country would have taken a stance but they didn't. They tucked their tails and bent the knee.
I will never ever vote for a Republican. I can see clear as day what they are now and it isn't good. They aren't able to hide who they are anymore.
You can have debates in the Republican party. You can in the democratic party. Which unfortunately makes the Dems a weaker party because it isn't a cult you are allowed to have a different opinion. The democratic party is basically all the sane adults that are left. It's not just the "left" anymore it's those in the center or those who didn't go far right with the Republicans. The Dems will spend the next year attacking each other and fighting within the party because they aren't unified and told what to think by one leader. So not all Dems will turn out.
It seems voter like to dismiss everything the democratic party does if they don't line up with them completely on every issue. The voters find one reason to vote for Republicans and ignore the rest of party line.
It used to be all back room whispers and dog whistles from the top brass running the party until one guy shows up and says all the quiet parts out loud, and now the mask has fallen completely off
Yeah 2016 changed me from Green Party to Democrat, and literally the Green Party turned out to be taking bribes from oligarchs to cut votes. But that just makes me bitter. I dont have someone i want to vote for i just have a party i have to try and vote against.
It's a miserable existence trying to compromise on everything you care about and let parties of rich assholes do whatever they want because you have no other choices other than stagnation or damnation.
The governing systems are so broken I almost just wish them to break entirely to get people who so comfortably ignore it to care but instead it will just hurt lots of people who apparently half of them desire it anyways as long as it hurts someone they think deserves it. Yay, we live in the middle ground of new mafias and shit conditions and crumbling society in a boiling planet. What a fucking joke.
American politics didn't used to be the polarized team sport it is now.
We're seeing the ultimate culmination of the Southern Strategy: Get with the preachers who run those "god says hate the blacks" churches that the South is full of, pay them to say "God says vote the Republicans in so we can use the government to take it out on the blacks." Fast forward 60 years, and take a look around.
It was certainly that, but people kept the nasty stuff quiet and pretended to be dignified. Now nobody hides that nonsense.
Within the Democratic party, there's debate about how to handle climate change. There are people who advocate for slow, cautious changes and still see fossil fuels having a small role to play in the future. There are others within the Democratic party that want more drastic action, and make a huge government spending program to try to rapidly move the US energy to renewables (even naming it after one of the biggest US government programs made during the depression). That's normal politics. And it's all within the Democratic party.
The GOP mostly deny climate change exists. A few GOP members suggest that climate change is happening, but is a natural event not caused by man.
The recent house drama from the speakership battle was caused because 10 nutjobs didn't want to fund any social programs and wouldn't approve the budget. Most GOP compromised and made a TEMPORARY budget proposal that the Democratic reps would vote for. This caused the hardliners to remove the speaker. Because he had the audacity to compromise on a TEMPORARY budget.
Removing policy aside and just looking at behavior, many GOP members do not believe in compromising to get things done. There's attempts to not hold elected officials accountable (unless they are from the other party). It's very little cooperation and more retaliation.
A single GOP senator didn't like that the US military would reimburse a servicemember's travel for medical care if they lived in a state where some reproductive treatments weren't available. This one senator has single-handedly denied 360 military promotions and nominations to military positions. The Senate has historically tried to make it where being the minority party still had some power, so the rules let this happen (the other GOP senators on this committee weren't blocking, just the one guy).
The Democratic senators became so fed up they decided to change the rules to prevent a single committee member from blocking promotions. While most GOP senators publicly condemn this guy, many said this rule change was too much. So it looks like the rule change vote will be along party lines, although the #1 GOP senator has said it might be necessary to vote through to get the military back on track.
The last GOP senator really known for being reasonable and wanting to work collaboratively (McCain) died. He was respected by both parties until Trump came along, and now the GOP don't really hold his legacy in high regard.
Sorry, a lot longer than I intended, but it's a pattern showing no desire to try to govern effectively. Putting all issues of policy aside, I think it's a bad idea to vote for the GOP.
The only issue with that summary is that the people who voted to remove the representative willing to compromise were the GOP nutjobs AND the entirety of the 208 DNC representatives that were present. While I'm sure they had some political reason (aside from the popcorn moments), they showed that they, too, weren't going to help someone willing to compromise.
In what world did Democrats owe McCarthy anything? He backtracked on the debt limit deal he personally negotiated in the summer to try and appease the nutjobs, and on his commitment to require a vote by the full House of Representatives before launching an impeachment inquiry into Biden, proving himself unreliable, untrustworthy, and a slave to the whims of the extremist fringe in his caucus. He publicly stated that he did not want house Democrats to help him keep the speakership, never reached out to them once in the leadup to his ouster, and offered zero concessions to entice Democrats to vote for him. So why in the world is it Democrats' fault that they didn't vote for a backstabbing, untrustworthy, extremist lunatic that spit on them publicly and gave them nothing to entice their vote?
I'm sick and tired of the rhetoric that since Democrats are the responsible adults in the room, they have to bear responsibility for not bailing the GOP out of their own messes. How about we hold McCarthy responsible for not keeping his caucus under control, or the right wing nutjobs for voting like they have full control of the government instead of being the fringe of the fringe in a party that controls a single chamber in Congress?
Let me put it this way, anyone who still identifies as a Republican is not worth voting for. If you can look past the fascists, racists, nazis, misogynists, fanatical religious nut jobs and still go "yeah, I'll associate with these people", then there is something irredeemably fucked up about you, and I'm not going to vote for you. Sure, democrats aren't perfect, but they tend to throw out their trash, instead of giving it a megaphone and a fancy committee seat.
I've done it before. Aka ditched the GOP when they started worshiping a spray tan.
I'm registered NPA. I think, generally, everyone should be represented. I have voted Democrat, Republican and independent. Although the past couple elections I have voted straight Democrat because the Republican party has seriously taken a fascist turn.
As a gay person, let me rephrase your question:
Would you consider voting for the party of people who have always dedicated themselves to hating you and making you suffer as much as they can get away with legally?
There IS some degree of factionalism within the two party system. It is much more pronounced in the Democratic Party. Ever since Reagan in 1980, the Republican Party's factionalism became severely diminished. The Libertarians are kind of their most loosely held affiliation.
The primary system is largely designed help direct and influence the political platforms of the two parties. The two parties have made some significant pivots and switches over its history.
But far more importantly however: What has really happened is the Citizens United and lesser known Speechnow decisions by the US Supreme Court effectively legalized corporate buyout of the American electoral system.
And now we got fascists.
So, the issue we see is that the republican party has often run democrats, and then had them flip to republican after election.
I don't trust most democrats either at this point.
Oof, could you give an example? Not calling you a liar; I'm just a young person trying to catch up lol
Synema and Manchin are the two biggest recent examples. They ran as dems but side with the GOP when convenient.
If you're looking at the Senate it's actually the other way around in the last decade. With the house and other offices it's much harder to say who does it more. I don't think it's any sort of conspiracy or playbook, just something that makes the news and sticks in people's memory when it happens... It's a betrayal after all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_party_switchers_in_the_United_States.
Christ. In 2023 there was 1 Republican who swapped to Democrat.
In the same year there was 12 Democrats who swapped to Republican.
Nope. No issue with the parties at all. Only one is clearly the problem for sure.
Thanks! I didn't think to search Wikipedia; that was really helpful :)
The answer, unequivocally, is "Abso-fucking-lutely." But, you phrased the question wrong because you assume that people that vote Democratic are Democrats. They are not. Something like 20-30% of people who vote exclusively or near exclusively Democratic consider themselves Democrats, whereas Republican voters are around 50-60% for their respective categorization.
This isn't particularly strange if you think about the authoritarian vs anarchical political dichotomy these two voter bases lean to for more than a second. The real problem with that is that Republicans, as a general rule, would never align with socialist values. So, while technically they could, anyone that claims to be a Republican with my values is almost entirely likely to be lying.
But, you missed a big thing in American politics: The moderate voter. We have a large group of people who consider themselves moderate, for reasons that all range within the realms of apathetic ignorance to willful ignorance. These people have either no moral quandaries with either particular side, are general unaffected by politics in a way perceivable to them, or are people who lean one way but do have moral quandaries with that side. Debates between parties are for them, which is why it's about presentation, media sound bites, and moderate views.
Anyway, hopefully that answers your question!
People who go online on sites like Lemmy to discuss politics are usually strongly in favor of one party over the other. However, not everyone who votes in elections is like that. There are many moderate or swing voters. Presidential elections in particular are decided by a few key swing states. There is also an expectation that the Congress and the Courts could be a check on each other and on the President, so sometimes people vote for a candidate that they don't fully agree with. Debates aren't always about which candidate or party has a more agreeable stance on the issues, but rather which issues are the most important.
There are no real moderates and swing voters are those who don't pay enough attention to what's going on to have an opinion on it. In reality, swing voters are ignorant.
Right now? Absolutely fucking not. In the past? No, probably not.
One thing to note is for all our partisan noise, the USA is a nation of centrists. If either party would put up a candidate that didn't pander to the extremes of their party they'd win in a landslide, but that doesn't make for very good down ticket fundraising and that's what it's all about.
No Democrat or Republican gives any shit about the actual country. All they're interested in doing is making themselves rich.
That's because you haven't seen it for what it is - a glorified "good cop/bad cop" routine.
More like "neutral cop/fascist cop who will do away with your right to the due process allowing you to talk to these cops in the first place"
There is no such thing as a "non-fascist" cop - it literally comes with the territory.
Do you not know what a metaphor is? We aren't talking about cops.
Actually, the metaphor works a bit better than you think. If there is no such thing as a cop that cannot not serve the fascist institution that employs them, it might just be true that there is no such thing as a politician that cannot not serve the interests that assures them their power and privilege.
I would absolutely vote Republican if they were just a bit to the left on abortions, education, and unions. Actually unions and teamsters would totally support Republicans if they weren't openly hostile to them.
Right now they're just different flavors of big government endlessly growing and I really think some libertarians need some wins to shake them up.
I agree, but want to add that we would need actual libertarians, not fascists calling themselves as such
The ones who actually run for office are less fascist and more incapable of actually running anything.
Do you have some examples? The term libertarian seems to me to have been hijacked by the far right for the most part, and I'd like to see there's real libertarians out there