I'm all for reigning in government spending and our unprecedented deficit, but not sure throwing a stick of dynamite into the grant office is the best approach.
In many ways, Americana seem to be voting for the country to devolve into anarchy.
I think that's overstating the case. There's a political duopoly, both parties are obviously, blatantly corrupt, and many voters on both sides plug their noses and choose what they believe to be the lesser evil. They might or might not be empirically wrong in their beliefs, but don't mistake voting for enthusiasm.
And "the majority" of voting Americans is technically 49.8%. With 63.9% turnout, that's only 31.8% of eligible voters.
Even if both parties are obviously, blatantly corrupt to about the same extent there is still large variation among individual politicians in both parties.
P.J. O'Rourke, a well known conservative author and journalist, said it well in 2016 when he announced this:
> I have a little announcement to make ... I'm voting for Hillary. I am endorsing Hillary.
> I am endorsing Hillary, and all her lies and all her empty promises. It's the second-worst thing that can happen to this country, but she's way behind in second place.
> She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters.
People do want a kind of chaos agent. Just look at all of the love for Luigi Mangione. Is Mangione the right chaos agent? Rationally speaking, no. Is Trump? Rationally speaking, no. But the desire for fundamental change is palpable.
Those who pearl-clutch the "norms" will continue to lose, and continue to be perplexed about why they lose.
One of the all time great tweets. People might well want a chaos agent on their TV, because politics has become wrestling. They absolutely will not like it when the chaos comes back to them, which they have assumed it won't. Look at how many people were complaining about the price of eggs before the election; now watch how the US responds to avian flu with a nonfunctional federal government.
What makes you think we had a "functional" federal government before the election?
You appear to be ignoring how both Democrats and Republicans have consistently, completely failed to function for the public they're supposed to serve, for many decades. When the people are desperate, they make desperate choices. There's a reason that Biden was extremely unpopular at the end of his term. Don't ignore that.
False equivalence or just false.
By many measures the Democratic Party is still an ordinary political party that tries to enact particular policies to address particular problems based on facts and a cost-benefit analysis. The ACA is one example. The IRA is another. There are many. While in power they diligently seek to pass legislation addressing priorities they ran for office on. You may disagree with these priorities, but the majorities who elected them do agree with them. And in fact, typically a majority of Americans, including many who vote against Democrats, also agree with these priorities.
The Republicans also run on platforms but are much less successful at converting their positions into legislation, largely because their coalition contains a fractious contingent that is motivated by attention more than policy goals, but also because in the event they get cold feet: they realize in the event that repealing the enormously popular policy they ran against would have enormous blowback for them. Repealing Roe is one example. The repeated attempts to repeal the ACA is another.
What you're reacting to, I think, is the failure to pass policy due to checks and balances -- you need both houses of the legislature, the executive, and, increasingly, agreement of the courts. But even if the policy passed, nearly 50% of the populace would think they had been failed by its passage.
I hope you and I don't have to learn how functional the government was before the Republicans broke it. The avian flu is a great test case. International trade is another. Here's hoping the mass layoffs Trump intended to set into motion and the collapse of state and local governments due to sudden budget shocks doesn't set off another Great Depression. That would be another interesting test case. What happens when ram the ship of state into a granite cliff?
https://web.archive.org/web/20081114051543/https://barackoba...
The IRA?
The ACA was more or less Romneycare, a Republican idea, but ironically passed with zero Republican votes. The ACA was a permanent government subsidy to the very health insurance companies that people hated and continue to hate, as evidenced by the recent celebration over the murder of a health insurance CEO. The ACA has not resulted in universal health care. It has not ended medical debt and bankruptcy. It has not ended the practice of claim denial. It has not controlled health insurance premium costs, which have surpassed the inflation rate despite bad inflation in recent years.
In any case, the question of the extent to which candidates keep their promises is not particularly interesting, because even their policy proposals are contolled by their campaign donors. Fundamental changes in the system are rarely on the table. The disparity of wealth in the US has continued to grow unabated over the past 50 years, through Democratic and Republican presidencies.
> they realize in the event that repealing the enormously popular policy they ran against would have enormous blowback for them. Repealing Roe is one example.
Um, they succeeded at that. Roe was overturned by Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican presidents.
I agree with much of what you say, but the ACA is popular. Its popularity is growing. Passing the ACA was a matter of getting half a loaf rather than none. It was an attempt to do something. The rest is just goalpost moving. You set out an extreme position: "completely failed to function for the public they're supposed to serve, for many decades". They passed the ACA. The ACA is popular, has brought the cost of healthcare down, brought health coverage to millions of people, etc., etc. I wouldn't have preferred this system, but it obviously is not a complete failure.
> In any case, the question of the extent to which candidates keep their promises is not particularly interesting, because even their policy proposals are controlled by their campaign donors. Fundamental changes in the system are rarely on the table. The disparity of wealth in the US has continued to grow unabated over the past 50 years, through Democratic and Republican presidencies.
Sure, and this sucks, but "the Democrats are as bad as a Republicans" is a recipe for cynicism and resignation, not revolution.
> Roe was overturned by Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican presidents.
I pointed this out precisely because they did succeed at it. They succeeded at it and then struggled in the next two elections, and arguably the third as well. In every national election this year around the world the ruling party was thrown out. This is the first time since ... well, since the chart I got this fact from begins, that no election was one by an incumbent party:
https://jabberwocking.com/bad-economies-only-recently-starte...
That Harris came as close as she did actually shows that the headwinds against the Republicans have continued.
My point was that when they take the power they have won and attempt to enact their policy positions they start losing. This was an example of that.
It's more popular than nothing, of course. I wouldn't trade it for nothing either.
> Its popularity is growing.
This is somewhat misleading. Over the years, its polling has gone up and down within a range. https://news.gallup.com/poll/654101/health-coverage-governme...
> Passing the ACA was a matter of getting half a loaf rather than none. It was an attempt to do something.
This is the kind of Sophie's Choice I hate. Single-payer health care was proposed in the US in the 1970s but was killed by Jimmy Carter, inspiring Ted Kennedy to primary challenge him. We could have had it, and still could have it.
Polling doesn't tell the whole story, because single-payer was taken off the table for decades. It wasn't part of the public debate, because hardly any political leaders advocated for it, not even Democrats. Bernie Sanders, a socialist, almost single-handedly resuscitated single-payer. Regardless of the polling, single-payer is demonstrably superior, as shown by nearly every developed country in the world besides the United States. The reason we don't have it is massive corruption, the health care industry buying off opposition. Buying Democrats as well as Republicans.
> "the Democrats are as bad as a Republicans"
I didn't say that. I said they're both corrupt.
> They succeeded at it and then struggled in the next two elections, and arguably the third as well.
Third? What third? Dobbs was decided in 2022. To say that Republicans "struggled" seems like an overstatement. Perhaps they won fewer seats in Congress than they could have, but they still took control of the House in 2022, adding the Senate and Presidency in 2024. If only Democrats experienced such a "struggle".
> My point was that when they take the power they have won and attempt to enact their policy positions they start losing. This was an example of that.
Republicans gained full control of the federal government a mere two years after Dobbs. That's winning, not losing.
It's interesting that in this entire thread following my original comment, not one comment has defended Democrats by describing how they do good things and significantly help the public. Talk about a severe lack of imagination.
That the choice is always phrased in terms of harm reduction just proves my point about the duopoly and corruption. Why are better things never possible?
Evidence is that they don't.
They send the same reps and senators back over and over and over.
If they truly wanted a chaos agent, they should be turning over all the offices.
They wanted Trump--specifically.
> If they truly wanted a chaos agent, they should be turning over all the offices.
I'm primarily talking about the swing voters, who can swing elections only when they're close. Large groups of partisans also exist who vote Democrat or Republican no matter what, no matter the candidate, so it doesn't really matter to them whether the candidate is a chaos agent or not. And of course the House of Representatives is heavily gerrymandered precisely to avoid close elections.
Moreover, an individual member of Congress, 1 out of 100 in the Senate, 1 out of 535 in the House, doesn't have much power to change things. Their primary function is to support the President's agenda. That's why people focus more on the Presidential race, because the President makes a lot more of a difference than a member of Congress.
In any case, though, Congress does tend to change hands according to how the public feels about the President, especially the House, the entirety of which is up for election every 2 years.
Are you KIDDING? You’re talking about overstating, following with a huge understatement.
Trump sells fucking bibles to schools. Trump launched a shitcoin right before his inauguration. Trump took 1 million dollars per CEO for his inauguration. The corruption scales are off the charts with Trump. You can’t talk about "the lesser of 2 evils" when one of them is a literal wannabe dictator / mafia boss / cult leader. Come on.
I wasn't trying to argue about who exactly is the lesser of evils. As I said, the voters might be wrong about who that is. My point was merely that not everyone who voted for Trump, or voted for Harris (or Biden or Clinton), was enthusiastic about their choice. Not everyone was trying to "own the other side". In fact, many people vote primarily based on their beliefs about their personal economic prospects. As a famous 1992 campaign slogan said, it's "the economy, stupid".
The president ran on a platform of brazen corruption and retribution against political foes, and he's following through.
Democrats doing insider trading and other low stakes small ball shit really should not be mentioned in the same conversation.
If a politician happened to enrich themselves while simultaneously helping the public, then shrug, I can live with that. But the latter part, the most important part, isn't happening.
Er, plus supporting genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and repression of peaceful protest of the same with our tax dollars. Not what I would call "low stakes small ball shit", and not something I will ever overlook or forget.
Democrats had four years to find a strong candidate to beat Trump, or to find a way to hold him accountable. It didn't seem to me like they even tried very hard to do that.
Even after all their 'mistakes', if that's what they were, they could still have handily won the election simply by promising to enforce an arms embargo. They had lots of polling showing this fact very clearly. Over 30% of 2020 Biden voters in battleground states said the lack of an arms embargo would probably affect their vote!
You - and every 2024 Dem voter - might ask yourselves why Democrats would rather hand the Presidency to Trump than stop supplying the bombs killing Palestinians.
If the Democratic Party leadership were capable of learning, they would ask themselves what they could have done differently to turn out the folks who stayed home. Instead they will blame the left, put their head in the sand and run the same losing strategy next election expecting different results. The fact that democrats are our best defense against authoritarianism means this country is pretty much toast.
* Four UN ceasefire vetoes said otherwise.
* Over 100 weapons shipments, including 2,000 lb unguided bombs, said otherwise.
* Using the power of the government to smear peaceful student protesters spoke mountains.
* Biden's repetition of debunked mass rape lies painted a pretty clear picture.
* Constant gaslighting from Blinken, Patel and Miller re Israeli atrocities such as Hind Rajab or the Al Nasr babies said otherwise.
* A firm commitment from Kamala that there would be no arms embargo, "no matter what", said otherwise with crystal clarity.
I find the rewriting of history on this topic deeply disturbing.
Source on that?
You can Google the term and find articles referencing it, and a quick search on any social media platform will show usage as well. You can even find it used on HN. You can buy "Genocide Joe" merch on Amazon. People called him that to his face[0].
[0] https://www.c-span.org/clip/campaign-2024/genocide-joe-yelle...
https://truthout.org/articles/rights-groups-say-bidens-israe...
... And? What is the point you're trying to make here - that there's a 12 month statute of limitations on openly advocating for ethnic cleansing?
How many residents of Gaza ended up in Egypt or Jordan? I rememeber that kerfuffle and basically Egypt and Jordan said absolutely not, and it didn't happen. Trump is a loudmouth, so it's unlikely that he'll follow through on this (fortunately) but personally I count the chances of him doing something like this much, much higher than I did for the other US party (both of whom's policy on Gaza/Palestine has been really bad).
There is no equivalent of Trump or JD Vance on the democratic side.
My bold prediction: the deficit will continue to grow at record levels.
He does not have the mandate from the electorate that he claims, so let’s stop acting like he does.
Maybe this is a way of doing the same thing. If people defend funding something strongly, it might deserve it, and if not...