Countless lives over the next decades are going to be lost due to decisions being made by this administration. Deaths and illnesses that otherwise would have prevented using existing frameworks and systems had they not been destroyed.
Edit: Here's a start: Be more critical of the news. Content a bit; the scope of topics that are discussed more importantly.
The problem with undermining trust in the news media is that people will just replace that with blind trust with something else, and we have no way of really knowing if that something else will be worse. This is what happened with conservatives and led to the rise of Infowars.
Part of problem is that the most unproductive and unpopular and poor ideas are the most loved ones among their elites.
Well, at least some of them left (or some part of it) started entirely on its own.
The only purpose they seem to serve is strengthening the far right by imposing counter productive purity tests and pushing people to vote for the far right options over more centrist ones.
Strongest economies are from blue states. Poorest are red states. Same with crime. Health out comes(Life expectancy, infant. mortality). Who was the only president to run a surplus in recent history.
Anyway, instead of being dedicated to achieving change, the American left CONSTANTLY gets distracted, e.g., complaining about those successful Democratic presidents (or candidates) who drive meaningful change as "incrementalist", "too moderate", or, my absolute favorite, "liberal" as if the European use of the word has ever mapped to the American use. I've even seen people on the left criticize AOC for selling out, when what she is doing is practicing effective politics.
Harris’s written support was turned into an ad campaign for Trump. You can agree or disagree with the policy but it isn’t a great hill to die on if you want to win elections.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/harris-gender-surgeries-ja...
I also agree that it feels like Democrats don’t stand for anything. But I think by leaving that space open they let ads like this paint what they stand for.
My issue with what you said is the claim <some issue> is not a hill to die on. They are not dying on any hills at all.
To die on a hill means that you stand on the hill and get killed rather than leave it. It means having a conviction so strong that you will never walk it back. That's the polar opposite of the establishment dems right now.
There are many things Harris could have done to improve the situation like publicly stating a balanced position. Doing nothing was dying on the hill.
What do you think she should have done?
California, for example, is currently pursuing a lawsuit (https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bont...) seeking to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. That's a controversial position on a high-profile issue whose opponents consider it to be outrageous persecution. Would you say this is an example of "shitfest red meat"? Or do you think that it's just an ordinary lawsuit, because you're not personally outraged by it, because you think California's position is reasonable?
One can agree or disagree on the question of whether transgender care is medical care, but I think the sensible position for any political party (on virtually any such question) is to defer to the scientists and medical experts who spend all day working on this stuff.
AFAIK, the then-current science said that this was one of the only effective treatments for gender dysphoria, and under our Constitution inmates can't be denied medical care, even if it gives somebody the ick or would be politically inconvenient at the next election cycle.
I’m not saying I agree or disagree with this policy but the point of politicians is to advance policy one way or the other which requires agreeing/disagreeing.
If you think we're going to amend the Constitution to ban gender affirming care for inmates you're living in outerspace, but I suppose your position is that politicians are supposed to just say shit that has the correct hate-valence and then it's as-good-as-accomplished?
Inmates received this care under Trump 1 (because USG is obligated to provide it, Constitutionally): https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/us/politics/trump-prisons...
They've tried stopping it in Trump 2 but have been enjoined by courts (because USG is obligated to provide it, Constitutionally): https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/federal-judge-temporaril...
Your reaction proves the point that this is a purity test.
I’m not taking a stance one way or the other but you aren't able to engage without arguing against points I didn’t make.
Your argument: It is a purity test for politicians to say that transgender inmates should receive care (which Kamala passed, to the detriment of her electability)
My argument: It is actually SCOTUS who decides this (or would require a Constitutional amendment, which is obviously absurd)
"Never say anything that the right can play in an ad" is not my idea of effective campaign strategy.
Why do you think she didn’t say anything?
I never said that. There were many far-leftists who sat out in 2024 due to Palestine, proclaiming that Kamala would've been just as bad or worse than Trump on that issue which is ludicrous. Needless to say, I'm not opposed to progressive ideals but the reality is that they're more focused on principles than getting elected.
> that also poll extremely well with the general public
If that's the case, why don't we see more candidates like Bernie/AOC/Mamdani being elected across the country? I can probably guess your next is answer is that the DNC and/or billionaires suppress their campaigns?
And you don’t have to look for second order effects to see how progressive issues poll — look at recent polls on Palestine, single-payer health care, housing affordability, and plenty of other progressive policies, by reputable non-partisan sources.
Centrism is just as much of a political perspective as being anywhere else on the spectrum and can color political perspectives just as easily — it just biased in favor of the status quo so it’s got a much easier job.
Blaming individual voters for voting ‘wrong’ is the first line of defense for people unwilling to take a hard look at the efficacy of the people that are supposed to be mobilizing and representing those voters. If your politician doesn’t represent the voters’ values enough to gain their vote, the problem is the politician. The mainstream dems have just run out of leverage to coerce people into candidates they don’t align with using the “vote blue no matter who” tactic.
If you could link them, that'd be great because I don't know exactly which ones you're looking at. My guess is that these ideas sound great on paper: who doesn't want more affordable housing? But, the actual policies (or lack thereof) being proposed are not popular with the general voting populace.
Affordable housing sounds great for example, but the plans from Bernie et al. seem to include a lot of government spending on building public housing and implementing rent control on private housing. I can personally see why someone might be opposed to voting for even more government involvement in housing which we already have quite a lot of and look where we're at.
I concede that the DNC (and their donors by extension) resist far-left candidates but I don't believe that, if the proposals are so popular, it would be consistently suppressed by higher powers in that manner. Basically, I don't think the lack of far-left politicians can be explained by that single issue.
> Blaming individual voters for voting ‘wrong’
My point was that they're not voting at all. No one in politics will take those people seriously because that doesn't get anyone elected. Maybe you don't personally purity test or sit out elections, but that kind of behavior certainly exists and turns off people outside the circle.
Let me be clear, the Dems didn't lose the 2024 election due to progressives sitting out. I just think they could be taken more seriously as a bloc by not abstaining because they're mostly aligned with the objectives of the Democratic party. There are only two options we have in elections, and working with what we have is the only option to get out of this mess.
Google, for example “Israel poll,” and look for organizations like Gallup, Pew and other reputable sources.
> the actual policies (or lack thereof) being proposed are not popular with the general voting populace.
Come on. This is a much bigger citation needed than finding a poll about a national political topic.
> I don't think the lack of far-left politicians can be explained by that single issue.
There isn’t a lack of progressive candidates. They’re in local positions— municipal, local representative— all over the place because city representatives are too close to the metal for that kind of interference. Unless you’re in a place like New York with an overwhelmingly large number of progressive voters, for the past couple of decades, there’s a zero percent chance of advancing to a national position without DNC backing. And they have announced that they’re directly fighting third party candidates.
> My point was that they're not voting at all.
Progressives vote in the primaries when candidates represent their viewpoints. The democrats refuse to give candidates that inspire their support nationally, which is their only job if they want to represent the people. If they don’t run candidates that people are willing to vote for then people won’t vote for them. That’s how this works. And if they’re actively suppressing third party candidates, expecting people to say “oh well, I don’t support 60% of what this candidate supports, including a core issue of morality, and pretty sure they’ll back down on most of the rest… but I don’t support 85% of what this candidate supports” is a losing strategy to get people to the polls. And then telling those have the “wrong priorities” and it’s their fault the country is on fire is an absolute fantastic strategy to alienate people, permanently. It’s cynical emotional blackmail to shift the blame from the people who failed at their job to mobilize voters onto the voters they failed to mobilize.
> Let me be clear, the Dems didn't lose the 2024 election due to progressives sitting out. I just think they could be taken more seriously as a bloc by not abstaining because they're mostly aligned with the objectives of the Democratic party.
The fact that you think the mainline democratic opinion is so important that people need to worry about being ‘taken seriously’ by them is exactly the reason the only people that take centrist democrats seriously are centrist democrats. They have manipulated the electoral landscape to stay in power despite mostly losing for the last decade and still think they have some kind of moral or intellectual authority.
Come up with all of the blame-shifting, exculpatory framing you want, but ultimately, the people that run the campaign are responsible for winning or losing the election. The hard truth is that democrat leadership lost the election in 2024 because they failed to present a candidate that people were willing to vote for in a way that inspired those votes. If they care about the country, believe in our electoral system, and aren’t willing to represent people on the left by letting whoever is most popular get elected, they shouldn’t proudly harpoon third party candidates. Whether they’re arrogant enough to assume they know better than registered voters, or are just power hungry, they’ve been more focused on staying in their offices than wielding their power as a party.
Most lefists/extreme right/far-left/far-right are not the “far right” or “far left” caricatures depicted by the media, internet comments, or the mouth of the political party conventions.
> I can probably guess your next is answer is that the DNC and/or billionaires suppress their campaigns?
Of course the DNC suppresses their campaigns. Most NY Dem leaders have not even backed Mamdani even after winning the primary (not to mention that Cuomo has an entire billionaire backed Super PAC still funding him after he lost the primary badly). You being able to guess that doesn’t make the idea false. The idea being a talking point doesn’t make that truth less valid.
It’s those dang progressives and their policies that moderates push through for election appeal then turn around and partially implement and defund and finger point and blame when those policies then fail after being setup to do so.
If you can’t blame progressives then you can’t get elected in this country.
Personally I do not see how we can afford to maintain the MIC for much longer, so these issues are very important to me.
The american left by and large is simply unrepresented. Democrats have represented center right positions since clinton.
If anything, it's those centrist democrats that use purity tests as much as possible to eject the left from the party.
As a good example of that, consider the case of Al Franken vs Andrew Cuomo. Franken was pretty progressive, so when it came out that he had a picture in bad taste where he mocked squeezing boobs, gone. 24/7 news about how he's really a monster and the worst person in the world.
Meanwhile, Cuomo has multiple credible allegations of sexual harassment and who does the party STILL back even after he lost the primary? He literally got endorsements from Democrats who shed tears because of the Al Franken photo.
The same thing happened to Bernie Sanders. The centrist dems and media started circulating garbage about how he was sexist over a comment he didn't make.
Biden had a decent representation of left cabinet picks. But otherwise, the party has been pretty slow to change. Obama, in particular, gets remember as being progressive yet he truly was not. He took some antiwar stances and then failed to deliver on those promises. That was about the end of his left leaning policies.
And hell, just look at how first the Tea Party and then MAGA managed to yeet a lot of what used to be "moderate" Republicans out of the party alright.
“The Left” as defined by a broad, working class based coalition independent of urban/rural has historically been formidable. But as the closest example of this in recent history - Obama coalition - erodes, and GOP eats into working class voters, it becomes less formidable.
Really The Left (the Democratic Party) needs to rebuild an electorally successful coalition. The leaders that could lead that aren’t obvious to me yet.
> EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections
> The move continues to expose communities across the country to toxic forever chemicals in tap water
If this really were a "team sport", one half of the team wouldn't be set on undermining the health of the other half of the team.
i guess you reject their request to stop trying to defeat the other team. but you also object to the use of the word "team" to describe a political party?
could you explain?
Also the baseline GOP today exists in a different reality (e.g. where Trump won the 2020 election and Democrats did the COVID lockdowns)
That was one of countless examples of where powers passed by one side with a majority invariably end up coming back to bite then when they become the minority. The Founding Fathers designed our political system to be largely dysfunctional without widespread consensus. That was clearly wiser than the path we are increasingly choosing in modern times.
It is not true anymore, as all power is centralized in the parties. The House’s impeachment power will essentially never be used against the dominant party’s President, which allows POTUS to act with impunity and strongly incentivizes him to secure his party’s House dominance — a dynamic we’re seeing very explicitly at play over the last few months.
POTUS keeps the House reps in power, the House reps let POTUS do whatever he wants. Both win by severing their need to have popular policies in order to hold political power, so that’s what they work to do. Gerrymandering is an absolutely critical tool in this effort which is why POTUS has been publicly pressuring “members of different parts of the government” to pursue it (and they are!)
So no, it’s not a non-sequitur.
For the normal balance of powers - the legislative makes laws, the executive implements them, and the judiciary ensures the latter matches the intent of the former as well as that they remain constitutional. The legislative can undermine the judiciary or the executive by passing new laws. The executive can undermine the legislative with vetos, and the judiciary by appointments. And the judiciary can undermine the legislative by deeming the laws unconstitutional, or the executive by deeming their enforcement unlawful.
No branch is particularly superior to the others. The executive has the strength of being headed by a single person, but that is tempered by it having relatively less power than the other branches.
Impeachment is intended for exactly what it says: "high crimes and misdemeanors."
Again: all of the balances you describe only work when party loyalties do not exceed loyalties to their own branch's authorities and responsibilities. In practice what we've seen (over decades) is Congress ceding power to their own party's executive, because in practice people's political fortunes are determined by "did I make the leader of my party happy" rather than "did I retain the power of Congress."
This is EXPLICITLY counter to the intended design of the Constitution. You can read the rationale for it in Federalist 51.
This is trivially provable. POTUS (of either party, but especially in the MAGA movement) can and does threaten to primary anyone in Congress who checks him, ergo you either cede power and keep your seat, or you don't and POTUS uses his extreme control over party loyalties to replace you with someone who will cede power anyway.
The two party system (natural consequence of first-past-the-post elections) is a fundamental design flaw in our Constitution which is why it doesn't exist in any government the US has helped architect since its own inception.
All of these things are related. They're an entire web of powers, as you can read about in the Federalist Papers. The founders feared factionalism and figured it would be inevitable, but did not foresee the natural equilibrium that would be found at only two parties and all the consequent pathologies we deal with today.
And I think that segues nicely into this issue as a whole. Because the Founding Fathers were extremely averse of parties and the dangers they could pose, but this is one of the few examples where they let idealism trump reality in their philosophy. They themselves almost immediately broke down into factional parties, the first being formed by Hamilton, the author of aforementioned Federalist paper, himself! And even from that early stage it became clear that parties would become the defacto norm of society.
I'd also add that there's a bit of a paradox with things like at large proportional representation. It effectively encodes parties into the system, yet remains [relatively] diverse in practice, especially without mandates on things like the minimum vote percent. While district based FPTP has no connection to parties and ostensibly maximizes competitiveness by minimizing geographic regions a candidate needs to sway. Yet of course in practice, like you said, FPTP invariably trends towards a complete bastardization of democracy with two parties at a 50/50 equilibrium.
in case someone's feeling got hurt. Throughout the history of world not USA, right ideology has also blindly supported deregulation that people will die but regulation will naturally take place( ? ) like free markert
But Charlie Kirk went to the most left places he could think of, debated people, and won some converts.
Who on the left does that? Why doesn't anyone drive out to rural football games or country music concerts, have conversations, and put them on YouTube?
Sanders and AOC. Look at the stops on their Fighting Oligarchy Tour. It’s just that the DNC leadership will do everything in their power to fight actual progressives.
From my observations the liberal and progressive groups seem to take on strategies where they claim the moral high ground and treat anyone not following their way of thinking as opponents and not as potential allies/converts. So even in cases where they are technically or morally "correct" in their stance, they aren't effective in bringing outsiders to their side. One example was the "recognize your (white) privilege" thing. While it was arguably based on sound ideas, proclaiming an entire demographic is receiving more than they earn is never going to bring people over to your side.
I don't have much confidence that the Democrats will be able to turn things around in short order. The Democratic leadership seem stuck in their ways with no long term vision
It's easy to say "reject the news agencies", and sure that might be a good idea, but that carries the risk of "substituting bullshit with different, more dangerous bullshit". This has already been somewhat demonstrated; the conservatives spent decades undermining trust in news media and that led to the rise of assholes like Alex Jones and conspiracy theories becoming normalized by American conservatives. It's easy to say "well the left wouldn't do that", but you have no way of knowing that any better than I would.
I don't want to be cynical or hopeless, but I genuinely have no idea what I could do to help fix any of the shit going on right now.
[1] whatever that actually means, I've heard about a dozen definitions.
As to conspiracy theories on the left, they're there. Some of the anti-vax conspiracies came from people who would be considered on the (I'm going to apologize of this is seen as denigrating considering my earlier statement) granola side of the left. There's a fair bit of populist anti-corporate conspiracies and attribution of active malice rather a dispassionate corporate approach to trying to maximize profits.
I would suggest instead considering that it isn't "left vs right" conspiracies (though they have their own spectrum) but rather that there exists a "prone to conspiracies demographic" that is swayed by the left or the right at a given time and those conspiracies that are most in line with the political ideology of the swaying are more likely to be normalized. Politicians agreeing with the conspiracies speeds up its normalization and helps sway the conspiracy minded demographic.
I believe that the pro-science, pro-space, climate change is real, vaccines work of... lets put a range of 2008 to say... 2020 (its not that Biden abandoned it but rather that that congress was not advancing policies and the focus was more on "don't have it break more") significantly alienated the prone to conspiracy demographic from the Democratic Party. The Republican Party has embraced this demographic with the claims of a stolen election, supporting anti-vaccination positions, and openly accepting support of the various anti-{race} groups.
It wouldn't take too much for anti-capitalism or anti-government conspiracies to be normalized and spoken openly by "the left" if that is one's target demographic. It's that left leaning and conspiracy leaning is a slim demographic to try to target. If the conspiracy demographic was decoupled from the current Republican Party, then I would expect to see more left leaning conspiracy theories be espoused openly.
I would love to believe this, but I am not sure that I do anymore.
Anti-vax conspiracies have become extremely normalized in conservative circles and at least according to CNN, 70% of conservatives believed conspiracies that the 2020 election as stolen [1]. Assuming a roughly 50/50 split, 70% of 50% is about 35%; one third of the entire country. Maybe it's always been like that, but I don't think so, I feel like up until around ~2014 conspiracy theorists were largely on the fringes.
And of course, that 70% is people who are admitting to it. Famously, people were embarrassed to admit they wanted to vote for Trump which skewed the polling data. I suspect that the percentage of conservatives who believe in 2020 election conspiracies is actually a fair bit higher.
So I don't think I buy that "the conspiracy fringe was always there and conservatives were just more welcoming to them", I think that conservatives are actively creating new conspiracy nutes, and I think this is a consequence of their concerted effort to create distrust in media.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/03/politics/cnn-poll-republicans...
I mention that sounds kind of click baity? look it up. California wants to impose more stringent minimum space standards for amimals bred to slaughter (prop 12). Seems maybe good, or at least worthy of a real discussion?
But everyone had moved on by then, ironically to how much they care about animal rights (spending significant time volunteering in shelters and such).
Its just too easy to dumb people down with memes.
Trump reneging on NATO, turning military attention toward (checks notes) Venezuela, and isolating ourselves in global trade is just an absolute dream come true for China and Russia.
States can try to do some things in some cases, but the Supreme Court will get in the way and now the National Guard and Marines.
All three branches of The United States of America has been captured by a tyrannical government. Rights are being eroded for inhabitants of The United States of America, including its citizens.
You have no right to: safe medicine, safe food, safe water, vote.
The sooner the people recognize this and take action, the shorter it will be to reverse.
Americans have a duty to act, and act quickly: what's already been taken will take generations to regain.
I disagree.
The issue is there's about 1000 fires burning all with somewhat critical importance.
But further, the left and the politicians ostensibly representing the left simply are not aligned (at least in the US). It's a rock and a hard place. Generally the politicians positions are better than the right, but far less than what the left actually wants. So they rely heavily on "what are you going to do, let the other guys win?".
Meanwhile, the right has adopted nearly the opposite position. On most positions when the base says "jump" they say "how high?".
A big reason for that is money in politics. What the rightwing base wants is generally pretty compatible with monied interests. It's no skin off the nose of a rightwing politician if they want to ban books, that doesn't ultimately harm Disney's bottom dollar.
For the left, what they want in almost all ways will negatively impact monied interested. Better regulations makes rich polluters mad. Nationalized healthcare makes every business (except maybe small businesses) mad.
That's why "left" politicians tend to only support initiatives which effectively do nothing like recognizing a MLK or saying it's ok to be gay. And even then, they are happy to ditch those positions to win more rightwing base support because, shocker, that rightwing base is likely to care less about their inaction on climate change.
You are right, though, news is a big problem. And that's because mainstream media is corporate captured. That's why left policy positions no matter the channel are always framed in the absolute worst way possible. For example, whenever nationalized healthcare comes up I can guarantee you the framing will be "How will you pay for this very expensive program that will eliminate choice and cost a lot of money which might make everyone sad and probably will bankrupt everyone?"
If you look closely at the Ds they back Trumps policies, not that they come out and say so. Rather Bernie will come out and attack it. but Ds on so mnay fornts now remain silent and passive.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
The basic gist is that the left is too generous in its understanding of others' intentions, assuming good intentions from all actors long past the point where that's rational.
Look at how desperate they all were to leave DC and go on vacation, these people are not serious and they don't think there will be any consequence to them.
Edit: Also, most of the politicians in both parties get money from the same interests (oil, Israel, tech). So the leadership of Democrats basically wants the same thing as GOP, so there's only voiced resistance.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/MAHA-R...
It blows my mind that people refuse to accept modern countries and societies still don't go through this cycle.
I truly think the US will have a Putin like dictator by 20230. (I don't think this is good or want that)