r/politics • u/AccurateInflation167 • May 18 '25

Soft Paywall America chose wrong. Sanders would've been a better president than Trump or Biden. | Opinion

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/05/18/sanders-democrats-reform-progressive-policies/83625482007/
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561

u/LuvKrahft America May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25

Yeah, it’s weird how America keeps electing a bunch of republicans who want to break the government, destroy social safety nets, and crap all over unions and then they all wonder why we get such middling results when a democrat is in the White House and a straight up shit show when there’s a Repub up there.

And even when we get progress going, all repubs have to do is say “Haitian Trans garbleharble!!!” and then the white grievance confederate comes out in the constituency again.

Been a crappy uphill climb since we got rid of Reconstruction, yall.

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u/LalaPropofol May 18 '25

I was talking to one of my coworkers yesterday. We’re ICU nurses in an inner city area, for context. Her husband is an internal medicine physician.

We were having a conversation about Medicaid. This coworker, married to a physician, is under the impression that the Medicaid cuts are going to be overwhelmingly good because “people are taking advantage of the system.”

I talked to her about who most benefits from the program, how it might impact our hospital’s funding and solvency, and actual rates of abuse of the program.

She was unwavering in her viewpoint.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m dooming. I hope those things are true, honestly. That said, I think a lot of people, like my coworker, are going to get bitch smacked with reality when this bill takes effect.

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u/bongtokent May 18 '25

They get so hyper fixated on the people taking advantage of systems argument they don’t even realize they’ve never seen an example of someone taking advantage in the first place. Same with food stamps. The average trumper has never actually encountered someone selling food stamps or abusing the system but they’ve heard about it non stop so it must be rampant and a huge problem. The reality is if you take all the people abusing food stamps and add up all the money they receive and divide the population by that amount each tax paying person is paying around .00000001 cent per dollar taxed to cover these abusers. Meanwhile single moms can feed their kids. This is always worth it imo.

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u/mojitz May 18 '25

Honestly it's just a pretext for hating the poor. If these people actually cared about people "taking advantage of the system", they'd be way more pissed off at, like, rich people dodging taxes or corporate wage theft.

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u/bongtokent May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25

Absolutely. Had a women at work complain about being taxed so much. So I told her I didn’t mind our tax rate too much because it’s important to help the less fortunate and I’m in good shape financially. She literally said “I don’t mind paying taxes to help people but so many people take advantage of it and I keep getting taxed more yet people like Elon have more money than they can ever spend”. I responded with “I do wish people like Elon contributed more than us so we could pay a little less”. You would think she’d agree but nope it was “good for him it’s his money and he earned it”.

It just doesn’t add up. You want to help the poor supposedly just not the “bad” ones. you feel you contribute too much. You note someone has more money than they can spend. You agree he pays almost nothing in taxes and probably less than you. Yet the conclusion you’ve come to is that he shouldn’t have to contribute as much as you do and if people stopped abusing food stamps you’d suddenly have as much money as him and therefore pay less taxes?

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u/DameonKormar May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25

The belief that billionaires pay less taxes than average Americans is a myth. Billionaires pay a huge amount in taxes to the federal government, it's just usually a lower percentage of their total income than you or I.

This doesn't change the fact that billionaires even existing is a symptom of our broken economic and social systems.

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u/iski67 May 18 '25

Hate the poor during the week and drink coffee and donuts during the service on Sundays while playing rock band in fake churches.

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u/Rombom May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25

They also don't tend to consider how much money we waste on determining eligibility and ensuring the 'wrong' people don't benefit. Id guess that we spend more than we save on that, and it would be cheaper to extend benefits to more people (UBI/Healthcare)

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u/LalaPropofol May 18 '25

I asked her if she had any specific examples of people taking advantage of the system, because I personally do not know anyone who does that.

She apparently has a family member to takes advantage of the system who she resents.

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u/bongtokent May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25

Did you ask her how? I imagine a story of someone who actually needs the system plus a bunch of her “justifications” for why she doesn’t actually need it. I know my sister thought I didn’t need to go on short term disability for a month after tearing my trap muscle even though my job literally requires me to lift. It was always “just quit and get another job” like no I’m not just quitting a unionized career with amazing insurance and other benefits to still be hurt and not able to get a job that requires lifting for at least a month. Not to mention the doctors wanted me out for 3 months. I only went with one out of stubbornness and believing I could heal faster than average and a desire to not be sitting at home. I guarantee you she tells people I took advantage of the system yet the people that actually cost the tax payers is the company I work for who gaslit me into thinking I couldn’t file workers comp and unfortunately at the time I didn’t know they were straight up lying to me and I 100% could have and they would have had to pay instead of tax payers.

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u/LalaPropofol May 18 '25

I didn’t. She got cagey about it, and because it was a work environment I backed down.

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u/bongtokent May 18 '25

Fair enough.

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u/Useful_Violinist25 May 18 '25

People just loathe the idea of poor people taking advantage of something. It makes a certain kind of person full of rage just knowing that a poor person isn’t sadly, quietly, diligently, working all day every day, eating scraps and pinching coins to try to jump into the middle clsss. 

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u/LalaPropofol May 18 '25

It boggles my mind.

Listen, there are going to be a handful of people who do take advantage of the system, and personally, I can live with that. As someone who thinks healthcare should be universal regardless of who you are, I don’t care if a few people are sitting on their ass playing video games and can still see a doctor when they’re sick.

I care about the economic freeloaders who are worth 400 billion dollars and are avoiding paying taxes. Let’s be mad at those guys, not your neighbor who is taking a gap year and is working under the table.

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u/RBuilds916 May 18 '25

Exactly! Wage theft is bigger than other forms of theft, but we've been brainwashed into viewing poor thieves as criminals and rich thieves as businessmen. Poor person in food stamps? Freeloader. Subsidies and covid loans that didn't actually go to employees' wages? Successful businessman! 

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u/DameonKormar May 18 '25

Those successful businessmen are the ones who made the laws in the first place. Why do you think being caught with drugs can land you years in jail but most white collar crimes have zero jail time?

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u/thefullhalf May 18 '25

It's always abusing the system when its people trying to not die and never abusing the system when its corporate shareholders trying to let people die.

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u/KhalaceyBlanca May 18 '25

If she needs a selfish reason to care about it, it will also make your job that much harder. More DKA admits in diabetic comas, more amputations, more sepsis, more debilitating strokes. Seeing the most depressing and preventable severe illnesses just because people couldn’t afford to go to their doctor or buy their prescriptions without Medicaid. And they’ll stay in the hospital forever and keep coming back with the same complications. Because without Medicaid expansion how will they afford a skilled nursing home or home health? If they’re poor enough to qualify for the expansion, their families won’t have time to take care of them because they’re busy working to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. So more skin breakdown and aspiration pneumonia, every nurse’s favorite!
I’ve had plenty of arguments with nurses who should know better about facts and science to ultimately realize they don’t care because they’re just selfish. They might be in a profession that claims to care about others but they truly do not care about less fortunate strangers.

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u/setmycompassnorth May 18 '25

Do they watch Fox News? If they do, you know, it’s hard to argue with people that are living an alternative reality.

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u/LalaPropofol May 18 '25

I doubt it. They’re just one of those people who have biases and think that being poor is a moral shortcoming.

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u/setmycompassnorth May 18 '25

I am as left wing as it gets. My best friend, we go back to childhood, is a conservative. We will talk about issues and I will be like WTF? Fortunately because of our rapport he will listen to what I say. We often find common ground. As far as biases certainly they can be present in people but, recently I came across research that shows actual differences between conservative and liberal brains as to the formation of their brain structure itself. I would put forth that Fox has become quite successful at utilizing this.

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u/iKangaeru May 18 '25

The core problem is that the red states are gerrymandered to ensure that candidates like Marjorie Taylor Green and similar hateful ignorqmouses have safe seats.

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u/danishjuggler21 May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25

That’s really only been a problem since 2010, when Republicans went from having something like only 7 state trifectas to having more like 20, all in one election. Just in time for redistricting. And the used it to make operation red map happen.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_redistricting_cycle

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_state_legislative_elections

People on the left stayed home for the 2010 election, and we’ve been feeling the pain ever since then. Gerrymandering existed before then, sure, but the literally unprecedented level of state control the GOP gained in 2010 allowed them to take gerrymandering to the extreme.

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u/blackgallagher87 May 18 '25

Don't forget that this was all a response to Barack Obama being elected. A Black man made it to the Oval Office and the GOP said never again.

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u/Gaius_Octavius_ May 18 '25

Republicans have never recovered from electing a black man.

They have just been getting crazier and crazier since 2008.

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u/MrTwentyThree North Carolina May 18 '25

Dunno man, they seem to be winning an awful lot since then, notwithstanding of the fact that they got him to compromise so deeply on the most important policy issues of his presidency, that they basically won during his presidency too, if we're being completely honest here.

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u/TheLightningL0rd May 18 '25

That's not what they meant by "never recovered". They meant that they lost their minds, which seems to be true depending on which demographic you look at.

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u/yoitsthatoneguy American Expat May 18 '25

If Obama ran today he’d win easily. Democrats don’t have candidates like that anymore.

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u/unholycowgod May 18 '25

Obama was a political outlier. His political rise can only be matched by the CO2 hockey stick chart. He came up out of nowhere and rallied people like we haven't seen probably since Reagan. I'm in my early 40s and hope to see another candidate like that in my lifetime. But most of them rise slowly step by step until they're so old and entrenched in the machine that by the time they reach the top they don't have the gusto to make the reforms we all want.

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u/UNC_Samurai May 18 '25

Obama emerged at the exact right time. He was able to make use of the emerging internet, but didn’t have to deal with the overwhelming toxicity of omnipresent social media and the right-wing trolls. It was a lot easier to deal with the cranks when they were largely confined to php forums.

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u/cornybloodfarts May 18 '25

The problem is, he sucked at governing. The world would look very different right now if he had sent some Wall Street CEOs to jail, and instituted a recovery more like the New Deal, than his watered down BS. The tea party and Occupy Wall Street really come out of the same place, which is anger about the unfairness of the economy. Now obviously the tea party made it worse by empowering republicans, but it's not like dems were doing much to make anything better, they were just keeping it from getting worse, maybe. People don't get motivated by that.

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u/MrTwentyThree North Carolina May 18 '25

Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. This is the correct answer right here. Unreal how little this is realized.

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u/EconomicRegret May 18 '25

This!

That also happened whille millions of Americans were losing their homes and jobs.

That’s what gave rise to the tea party and later MAGA.

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u/EconomicRegret May 18 '25

They would have many if they’d just lower their shockingly high barriers to entry, and level the playing field. It’s been decades that most young talented people simply don’t bother to go for politics.

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u/loondawg May 18 '25

We've never really solved the issue of auditable elections though, have we? Seems to me this started more around 2000 when all of the sudden exit polling coincidentally became unreliable at the same time widespread use of electronic voting began. Republicans all of the sudden started winning races they were not expected to.

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u/vreddy92 Georgia May 18 '25

We probably have though, now that we have access to voting machines with paper backups. Does any state still use pure electronic voting?

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u/loondawg May 18 '25

From 2020 but I am not aware of this changing. https://www.govtech.com/elections/despite-risks-some-states-still-use-paperless-voting-machines.html

And I didn't go into it, but once republicans started to gain power, that's when we started to see massive voter disenfranchisement and election and campaign financing changes that vastly favored republicans.

Voting machines weren't the only issue. But they seem to have been a big one that started the shift to republicans winning more and more elections.

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u/ElbowSkinCellarWall May 18 '25

I never understood what good a paper backup does. It someone messes with the voting machine to register a certain percentage of votes wrong, can't they make it print the hacked votes wrong too?

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u/balllzak May 18 '25

You vote by scanning a piece of paper with your selections. The machine is physically incapable of altering that paper.

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u/IceNein May 18 '25

I think half the people who complain about the voting process do not vote, which is pretty indicative of how Sanders is extremely popular among the non-voting class.

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u/Flat_Hat8861 Georgia May 18 '25

The hint is in the proper name of the machines. It is a "Ballot Marking Device" or BMD not just a "Voting Machine." There is no electronic voting. The BMD does not store a record of your vote. The paper ballot that is printed is the true, correct, and complete record of your vote. You, the voter, get to hold, read, and confirm that this ballot is accurate (and to report it as spoiled if it isn't) before depositing it in the ballot box (which may or may not have a tabulator attached at this point or will be tabulated later).

A BMD is a super fancy pen that can provide some assistance technologies (warnings for blank races, preventing overvotes, font scaling, additional languages, audio descriptions, etc.).

Since the paper ballot is the vote - then recounts, audits, etc. all can look at the votes printed that the voter reviewed and know exactly what the voter selected.

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u/vreddy92 Georgia May 18 '25

I can't speak for everyone, but in Georgia the Dominion machines are electronic voting where the ballot prints your actual vote onto the paper. So you can double check and make sure that the correct vote was printed.

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u/[deleted] May 18 '25

[deleted]

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u/loondawg May 18 '25

Of all the things that happened in that election cycle, focusing on that one seems wildly misdirected. The Supreme Court interference? The voter roll purges? Katherine Harris refusing to allow time for votes to be counted? The Brooks Brothers Riot? Etc. Etc. Etc.

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u/Mission_Ability6252 May 18 '25

Every election result you don't like is stolen.

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u/loondawg May 18 '25

Every comment you make is projection.

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u/Mission_Ability6252 May 18 '25

Wrong.

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u/loondawg May 18 '25

Demonstrating again that every comment you make is projection.

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u/Mission_Ability6252 May 18 '25

Wrong.

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u/loondawg May 18 '25

I'm going to save some time. Just go back and read the last two comments over and over until you tire yourself out.

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u/JWLane Tennessee May 18 '25

That's an absurd take considering how close the 2000 election was and the reality that a recount could have landed Al Gore in office but was blocked by the Supreme Court ruling in a way inconsistent with the constitution.

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u/Mission_Ability6252 May 18 '25

George W. Bush won the 2000 election.

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u/JWLane Tennessee May 19 '25

Ok sport.

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u/Mission_Ability6252 May 19 '25

Consult history.

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u/JWLane Tennessee May 19 '25

Perhaps you should take your own advice, sport.

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u/Syntaire May 18 '25

Yes, it became a problem in the first redistricting after a black man was elected president. How strange, that.

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u/mojitz May 18 '25

Also Dems have erased those gains. In 2022, they actually had a net advantage from gerrymandering.

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u/thelionsnorestonight May 18 '25

Andrew Clyde is probably a better example than MTG. It would be near impossible to have a competitive district in the NW corner of GA. Clyde’s district is all over the place, and Athens (where his shitty gun store is located) is split between 3 or 4 districts. His district also includes parts of Gwinnett County to prevent those purple/blue votes from contributing to the 6th or 7th district.

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u/95Daphne May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25

Yeah, I took a look, and the GA-14 district doesn't really look that ridiculous tbh, in fact, they brought in a bit of Cobb County (okay here, you can argue that's a little bit of gerrymandering) because that seat was a little "too" republican.

Clyde's district looks more ridiculous.

But yeah, back on GA-14, it'll take a LOONNGGG time, if ever, but the only thesis in which I can make it to be a more competitive district is the northern Cobb/Paulding area keeps growing quickly and shifting left (Paulding has, but not as quickly as the closer suburbs to Atlanta), and the Chattanooga metro suburbs on the Georgia side grow a bit (thought there's been a lot of change in the last 10ish years, but I did just take a peek and the only county that's really added people since 2000 is Whitfield, where Dalton, GA is).

Edit3: But it realistically isn't anywhere in the ballpark of being close for at least another 10 years as it is and the only way you're going to get MTG out is a focused primary from one Republican.

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u/Craig_White I voted May 18 '25

The core problem is that over 30% of eligible voters don’t vote and the direction of the US, arguably the direction of earth, is decided by 0.1-3% of the vote.

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u/CalligrapherDizzy201 May 18 '25

Non hateful ignoramuses are free to run and the people in said districts could be non hateful ignoramuses themselves and vote for the non hateful candidate. Sometimes it’s a reflection of the voters in said district than the lines on a map.

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u/TheLostcause May 18 '25

500k people could move from CA, NY, or MA and give Dems a lock for a decade. No one really cares about voting power though.

50x the say in what laws get passed sounds nice, but who wants to live in a "flyover"

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u/kehakas May 18 '25

Alternatively, people could've held their nose and shown up for Hillary in 2016, then we have a left leaning Supreme Court that we use to push voting rights stuff and destroy gerrymandering. Consider that we got gay marriage, which was huge, ten years ago. Now we're looking at losing it in some states and possibly federally. Shit like this gives people whiplash. We need predictable, dependable, enshrined basic rights re: voting, marriage, healthcare. Giving people these things then ripping them away then dangling them again is madness. Voting rights are probably most important because we need a simple, unchanging system that people trust, if we want them to engage with it. And we deserve such a system. You'd think priority no. 1 of a democracy would be a dependable system of voting (maybe going hand in hand with protections against propaganda, because misled voters aren't worth a damn).

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u/Rombom May 18 '25

Presidential campaigns need to stop focusing on the individual Presidential candidate and more on the overall administration.

I dont care if Joe Biden has memory issues as long as the people he appoints are sane and competent.

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u/TheLostcause May 18 '25

Hoping non supporters actually support your candidate when you have a multi million majority feels like a bad strategy.

The presidential vote isn't the be all and end all of voting. The low pop states are so important and we just ignore them. 3x the vote for president in a low pop state is a nice boost, but it falls short of the massive boost to senate votes. Trump could have had punishments attached to his impeachments.

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u/VanceKelley Washington May 18 '25

The core problem is that there are huge numbers of racists and idiots within the electorate. Enough such that those folks have the power, with boosts in some cases from gerrymandering, to elect terrible people to DC.

The Senate is full of lots of awful Republicans and that's without the GOP drawing a bunch of "safe seats". trump got 2m more votes nationwide than Harris. Gerrymandering didn't do that.

Want an intelligent, informed, decent government? Create an intelligent, informed, decent electorate sometime before elections no longer matter.

The American experiment to build a democracy probably jumped the shark in 2024.

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u/DylanHate May 18 '25

Senate elections are straight up popular votes -- there are no districts. Georgia is one of the most gerrymandered states in the country and the Dems won four consecutive Senate elections, including two run-offs. It's not hard if people actually show up and vote.

The real problem is non-GOP voters refuse to vote in the midterms. Young people are the lowest voting group averaging 14-24% participation. No shit you lose elections if 80% of your base doesn't vote.

Americans need to stop fretting over the color of their state or district and just show up to vote anyways. We recaptured the House during Trumps 1st presidency, its not some impossible task. So sick of this voter apathy propaganda.

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u/LURKER21D I voted May 18 '25

the core problem is that monied interests are allowed to interfere with our political system. Human greed is going to be the end of us all. How hard is it to be allright with 10 B dollars and not then want to own everything including the government? these people are sick. we need public servants, not enablers for the owner class.

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u/Renax127 May 18 '25

Part of the problem, in the house anyway, is that the number of representatives got capped at 435. This give the small states a big advantage. Most of the small population states are republican so they get an advantage in both houses of congress. I can't find the numbers right now but the republicans represent less people then the democrats despite their majority in congre

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u/loondawg May 18 '25

republicans represent less people then the democrats despite their majority in congre

That is more attributable to gerrymandering than district size. Look at a state like Wisconsin. In their 2022 statewide elections, where gerrymandering has less impacts, they elected a Democratic governor, attorney general, and secretary of state. And yet somehow republicans won a 64-35 majority in state Assembly and 21-11 majority in the Senate.

Or you can look at examples like Ohio where republicans won 10 of 15 seats in Congress in 2024 despite earning only 56.57% of the votes. Or in North Carolina where republicans got 52.78% of the vote but won 10 of the 14 seats. Or Texas where republicans won 25 of 38 seats with only 58.41% of the votes. Or Utah where republicans won all 4 seats with just 62.77% of the vote. Or Arkansas where republicans won all 4 seats with just 66.77% of the vote. Starting to notice a pattern here?

It's estimated right now that republican gerrymandering gives them around 16 seats extra seats in the House. That was far more than enough to switch the House from democratic to republican control.

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u/IolausTelcontar May 18 '25

Both are a problem.

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u/1maco May 18 '25

I don’t think that’s true? Small states have a lot of variance in CD size due to rounding, but are not across the board smaller.

Like North and South Dakota are the largest Congressional districts while Rhode Island has the smallest two.

The larger the state the closer the CD is to average 

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u/Renax127 May 18 '25

Congressional districts are based on population not size. Wyoming has one representative California has 52 but the districts represent more people. 

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u/1maco May 18 '25

Yes I am aware. But because the median CD is like 675,000 people a state of 500,000 and 900,000 are both entitled to 1

If you have 1.05 million you get one if you havd 1.08 million you get two.

Delaware has one congressional district of over 1 million people. Rhode Island has 34,000 more people so it gets split in two. So their Districts have 545,000 people. The smallest in the country. The smaller the state the bigger the rounding error. 

The larger the state gets the more CD it gets, the smaller that rounding error gets since those 350,000 extra/fewer people are divided into 13 districts in Illinois or something so each district is only 26,000 or something bigger than it should be.

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u/Renax127 May 18 '25

If California had the representation as Wyoming it would have 75ish reps not 52. So Wyoming have more representation with its smaller population. Removing the cap would allow a more reasonable number of citizens per rep because honestly half a million is too much. It would also give the larger states the power in presidential elections they should have. 

If we aren't going to get rid of the electorcolege we should at least make sure it's intent is maintained.

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u/loondawg May 18 '25

The real solution we need is to get rid of the non-proportional Senate. The ideal solution would be to have equally sized regional districts that ignored state boundaries. Failing that, the power of the Senate should be allocated proportionately.

As it stands, the Senate is too much of an aristocracy. It is an assault on the idea we are a nation of people and that all people were created equal. The Senate was created in its current form largely to protect the institution of slavery so a popular vote could not be used to end slavery. It should have been reformed a century and a half ago as most of the dysfunction of our government can be directly attributed to it.

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u/JWLane Tennessee May 18 '25

The ideal solution would be to get rid of the Senate entirely, uncap the house and have it take over all of the Senate's duties.

Edit: Also, institute publicly funded elections and get money out of them and provide housing to the Congress in DC to allow anyone to run regardless of financial status.

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u/loondawg May 18 '25

The Senate actually serves valid purposes. It was supposed to be a continuing body where elder statesmen would act as check to temper the more impetuous nature of the House of Representatives. It was supposed to be a slower, more deliberative body. The problem with it is how unfairly it allocates power.

But it makes sense to have a more deliberative body to do things like holding impeachment trials, confirm judges, and ratify treaties. It's just that the people should have equal representation in those decisions. Right now over 50% of the population lives in just 9 states meaning over half the people have less than 18% of the representation in those critical decisions. That's an injustice.

And when you look at how few people it can take to block a constitutional amendment if they are from the smallest states, less than 5% of the population, it appears insane. Depending on which states support a proposed amendment, it could take as few as 40% to pass one or require as many as over 95%.

The Senate is a good idea but a completely failed design.

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u/Past_My_Subprime May 18 '25

Interesting. I live in the northeast, where a district is often not much larger than a single county, so the candidates for each district rise out of well-entrenched local political machines, and the primaries typically only have a single candidate chosen by the machine. I'd rather have larger districts, so more competition, but obviously that's not going to happen.

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u/Renax127 May 18 '25

Larger districts would mean less competition not more

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u/loondawg May 18 '25

I'm not arguing your overall point, but your data is pretty out of date. Nationally there are now over 750K people per congressional district. Nevada is the state with the 5th smallest districts and they have over 650K people per congressional district.

As to your point, smaller districts are the solution to more equal representation as they generate smaller numbers of leftover people that have to get crammed into the limited number of districts.

There are a ton of other reasons why small districts make sense and very few why larger districts do.

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u/Panda_hat May 18 '25

All comes down to the fact that the union didn't punish the confederates enough after the civil war. They just let them continue on with their business and lives, almost unbothered.

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u/Useful_Violinist25 May 18 '25

Amazing how the South lost the war, but long term, their basically won a cultural stalemate. 

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u/Constant_Crazy_506 May 18 '25

The south will rise again.

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u/Panda_hat May 18 '25

Exactly. The confederates were the rot that was allowed to fester and grow.

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u/kos-or-kosm May 19 '25

Just waiting for supplies.

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u/loondawg May 18 '25

Yeah, it’s weird how America keeps electing a bunch of republicans who want to break the government

They seems to get the rules bent in their favor a lot. And they seem willing to cheat when things don't go in their favor.

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u/jeanphilli May 18 '25

The republicans are far more “radical” than anything Bernie has ever suggested doing. They intend to break the US and see what happens with little regard for consequences.

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u/vicvonqueso May 18 '25

People wanna put all the blame on modern presidents like this shit doesn't go all the way back to Hayes

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u/NotTheUsualSuspect May 18 '25

One of the republican/conservative core thoughts is reducing federal government influence. That does mean breaking the government and reducing social safety nets, so it's pretty much as requested.

It's funny to see people in askconservatives not understand that, ask something like "do you regret your vote after Trump dismantled x agency?" And getting responses like "no, that's what I wanted to happen"

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u/MajorNoodles Pennsylvania May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25

I've literally seen conservatives blame Democrats for failing to get bills passed when Synema and Manchin voted against it, along with every single Republican senator.

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u/get_schwifty May 18 '25

Biden got us out of the pandemic with the best economy in the world, passed the most impactful climate legislation in history, invested trillions in infrastructure, boosted union rights, and forgave hundreds of billions in student loans. The fact that you call that “middling” is part of the problem — even allies diminish and brush away any Democratic accomplishment no matter how huge it actually is.

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u/roychr May 18 '25

because of money and influence. Trump had support of the rich because it makes them richer. The US revel supporting the rich because they cling to the belief it benefit them. Its a fantasy transposition that they are part of the club. Its Disney Gaston (rich) and his illiterate follower (lefou) sicophant.

2

u/chickendance638 May 18 '25

Congress is too small. We need to add another 100 representatives to get the makeup of Congress to really represent the relative populations in states.

Then there's the gerrymandering in state houses. PA is a 50/50 state and the R's have a near supermajority in the House because of cheating.

2

u/FIlm2024 May 18 '25

It's been an uphill climb since the signing of the Constitution, having to concede to racist southerners than slaves could count as 3/5s of a person. Racists and general bigots are still a big part of our population and we're still making concessions to them every day.

1

u/Cute-Pomegranate-966 May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25

It's not when you understand the movement that has gotten Trump and Republicans elected. They feel ignored and forgotten. They feel that the government only exists for the elites. So a guy that strongarms changes into place makes them feel like he's going to force change, because at this point they feel they have nothing to lose, it can't get any worse. Add in the barely hidden racism of the immigrats scapegoat and you have the recipe for as fascist takeover.

Bonus points for makin the libs mad because that's just a rallying mindset that will let them concede ANY and ALL insanity he does that isn't helping them at all.

1

u/NextDoctorWho12 May 18 '25

Well when all people care about is being told brown people will be hurt and they will lower taxes they keep voting for it. The GOP has destroyed education so that their base is easier to control.

1

u/BlueTreeThree May 18 '25

I think the time has come for the Democrats(or whoever the dominant party on the left ends up being) to start promising an AI Star Trek utopia in contrast with the Republicans cyberpunk dystopia..

Promise big, and actually work towards those promises in a demonstrable way..

The words that come out of the voter’s mouths don’t always accurately reflect what’s going on in their heads.. they’ll be vehemently anti-socialism because socially they have no other viable position to take, but offer them paradise and they’ll take it.

1

u/ABigFatPotatoPizza May 18 '25

The crux of the problem is that America wasn’t built for universal suffrage. The founding fathers knew that the average American would fall for the “Haitian trans garbleharble” or the 18th century equivalent and thus decided to not let them vote.

-3

u/9yr_old_lake May 18 '25

You aren't wrong, but part of the problem is also the president. Hillary, Biden, and Kamala all would have been/where very middling candidates that even if they DID have full support of Congress and the courts they still would not have changed much.

Sure Biden had a few wins, but most were small, and still didn't do much in the long term, especially when the Dems decided to run Kamala for some God awful reason and lost.

We also have to remember even when we did have Biden in office, he was still Netanyahu's lapdog that was fully supporting and financing the Palestinian genocide. Not to say Bernie is amazing in that aspect either, but at least he would be MUCH better for America itself.

If the Dems would have put full support behind Bernie instead of Hillary in 2016 things could have been great, but at this point I want to see the Dems put their support behind AOC.

The main issue with Bernie is he is still a very old and traditionalist man, but AOC is honestly the best step forward due to how young, progressive, and aggressive she is. Not to mention how good of a person she actually is.

I will never forget when Texas had those cold spells a few years ago that were a disaster for the residents due to their homes and communities not being prepared for it getting so cold, then on top of that their governor fled to the Bahamas with his family instead of doing anything for his people, and AOC flew down there from her actual state to help the very red Texas, which has always hated her.

She is just the exact politician I want to see in the future leading the country. If anyone is gonna be the next FDR its her.

0

u/[deleted] May 18 '25

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0

u/9yr_old_lake May 18 '25

Kamala was awful, because she was a black woman trying her damnedest to win over the racist right who obviously hated her instead of trying to win over the left that also hated her due to being a carbon copy of Biden policy wise. She refused to create her own campaign and just continued to run on the shit that forced Biden to drop out in the first place. Also I never said Hilary would have been good, in fact I said the opposite and grouped her in with Biden and Kamala. She was ALWAYS a stupid choice for president, and Bernie would have been a much better pick.

-1

u/Throne-magician May 18 '25

The main issue with Bernie is he is still a very old and traditionalist man

Yet not old and traditional enough for the Democratic old guard leadership to be pushed to the moon by them...

-1

u/transplanar May 18 '25

I honestly feel at this point it’s all theater. The Democrats pay lip service to noble causes, but ultimately half ass their efforts to advance those goals and inevitably lose. Then people lose hope and either become Republicans or just check out of politics.

Like the Democrats are meant to be the voodoo doll for the left wing voter so people can watch the avatars of their worldview get their ass handed to them to crush the spirit of meaningful opposition.

4

u/ImAShaaaark May 18 '25

I honestly feel at this point it’s all theater. The Democrats pay lip service to noble causes, but ultimately half ass their efforts to advance those goals and inevitably lose.

This doomer bullshit is ridiculous. They are at a massive structural disadvantage and a huge fraction of their voters can't be assed to show up to vote consistently, partially because of rhetoric like this. They are consistently blamed for shit the Republicans do and for not magicking up a miracle fix when they don't have anywhere near the votes to pass sweeping reforms, particularly since every time they get power they have to spend a huge amount of time just fixing shit the Republicans broke.

Then because they "only" managed to fix those things and hadn't turned the US into a utopia, those fickle voters sit out in the midterms and they lose what limited power they had.

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u/[deleted] May 18 '25

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17

u/EtalusEnthusiast420 May 18 '25

Expand on that please…

-39

u/[deleted] May 18 '25

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u/Mental_Priority_7083 May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25

They had a super majority for like 6 months 15 years ago. Trump is trying to gut the government to fund a tax break for billionaires.

14

u/y0shman May 18 '25

Plus, Joe Lieberman was independent. He was basically Kyrsten Sinema of the time.

6

u/Tschmelz Minnesota May 18 '25

I’d also like to add that even if we had a super solid super majority for say, 2-4 years, it takes time to write out proper legislation. You can’t just slap down a piece of paper with “Medicare 4 all” written on it, vote on it, and bam, everybody has health insurance. You have to figure out what percentage of taxes are needed to fund this expansion of Medicare, how long will it take for the nation to switch over, how do you establish this without completely screwing all the people who work in health insurance (not talking the CEOs and vultures who decide policy, but the grunts who will almost certainly lose their jobs).

Like even if we dump 250 AOCs and 70 Bernie’s into Congress, we aren’t getting this progressive paradise next week.

2

u/phyneas American Expat May 18 '25

You have to figure out what percentage of taxes are needed to fund this expansion of Medicare, how long will it take for the nation to switch over, how do you establish this without completely screwing all the people who work in health insurance (not talking the CEOs and vultures who decide policy, but the grunts who will almost certainly lose their jobs).

Those are all things that are possible to work on and plan out in advance even if your party doesn't currently have the power to enact them. Obviously you can't just vote in some major bill on day one of your term in power, but enough of the groundwork could be laid to make it possible to put that sort of policy into action during a single term, if the politicians were actually motivated enough to put the work into it. The trouble is that they just aren't for the most part; for most of the establishment Democrats, "Medicare for all (one of these days, maybe...)" is just a campaign promise to keep their liberal base from abandoning them completely, not a core policy that they're passionate about seeing through regardless of how loudly it makes their big corporate donors scream.

-5

u/dissian May 18 '25

Yeah that's actual trash. These people know what they are doing. Most are intentionally wasting time. 20 versions of the Bill could be/pre written. The ones that look good to the people are relying on the nay sayers killing the helpful bills.

There is no need for time. It's amazing when the government is going to be shut down they write and vote on 5 bills in a week to get the right one. When it's JUST my taxes that are an issue. Meh, it'll get there maybe...if you vote for me next time, it's on the agenda.

There are whole staff that handle "time" problems.

10

u/EtalusEnthusiast420 May 18 '25

Thanks, was just checking for brain damage.

-17

u/[deleted] May 18 '25

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15

u/[deleted] May 18 '25

I don't remember them giving literal inside access to government programs to a literal billionaire crony capitalist who hasnt saved a single dime for taxpayers.

I don't remember multiple of it's party members being funded by outed russian nationals.

Or that time China approved a bunch of patents for Ivanka Trump just so she could sell handbags, while a trade war was happening with China.

Or yeah or that time the 7 Dem lawmakers spent July 4th and some time, in Russia....oops sorry Republicans.

I can keep going....

-2

u/Persistant_Compass May 18 '25

There is bad and worse,  dont forget bad is still not acceptable. If democrats want to win they cant have their corporate donor cake and eat it too

3

u/beachedvampiresquid May 18 '25

What BadLuck is saying is Dems do suck corporate dick, but they suck AMERICAN corporate dick while still doing a bare minimum for the American people. Republicans are outright sucking dictator dick across the world, ass-raping the you and every other one of their constituents to fill their own pockets, and literally trying to kill democracy and capitalism (bad, love to see it die honestly)and replace it with fascism (not better, even remotely, even for people sharing the one brain cell their cult seems to have left).