Blaming the Democratic Party when the other party is in control of all three branches is the true idiocy. The GOP is refusing to govern to show how broken the government is.
Congressional republicans are refusing to govern at the macro scale, by failing to enforce the law against the executive.
Congress has the power of the purse, but Trump has decided that he can just do whatever the fuck he wants with it, and violate the Hatch act. Why should the dems not use a filibuster against a congress that colludes with a criminal?
What other tools do they have to enforce the law?
The dems are choosing to shut down the government that they willingly funded earlier in the year for their reasons.
You may agree with the reasons behind their disagreement with the GOP and the president—but if you are agreeing with their tactics than you are ok with shutting down the government to get them. You and I can disagree on whether or not that is governing. I don’t believe it is, I believe it’s a tantrum that will ultimately backfire on them.
The other tools they have is to primary to find good candidates and win elections. They have chosen to rig and skip primaries to front lousy candidates. They could modify their platform to find issues that wont turn off centrist voters and avoid shedding off those voters who are more interested in the 80 part of the 80/20 issues.
Those reasons are 'The funding congress voted for isn't being spent on the things congress voted for'. They have every right to stop further spending.
> I believe it’s a tantrum that will ultimately backfire on them.
The recent history of the Republican party and Trump is nothing but one political tantrum after another, while they screech from the rooftops about some social wedge 20% distraction issue[1]. If any of that actually caused political blowback from centerist voters, they'd have about 30 seats in the Senate and 180 in the house.
[1] It's interesting that you seem to think that access to healthcare is some pet 20% issue.
Well of course it is. Depends wholly on who that “some” is. Redefining illegal immigrants as legal to gain access to healthcare is definitely on the 20% side of that ratio.
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
If someone else on HN is breaking the guidelines, we should flag their comments and move on. If we want discussions on HN to be more curious, we should lead by example.
That's fair, and I've flagged a few here. I don't think the above comment I replied to was flag worthy (having a bad take =/= having bad faith), but I do feel like it's a "borderline" comment that can either end in providing knowledge to someone, or devolving into a flame war.
I just feel kind of icky that I may need to "bait out" a bad faith actor. I'm not trying to "gotcha" someone and flag their account. But I know just having that mentality by itself is a bad way to approach conversation.
At the same time I also want to have have a charitable interpretation first and be able to point out certain points, no matter how seemingly obvious it is. It's an awkward balance.
Sometimes people have a hard time believing that others could be sincere in their positions, because those positions seem so unfamiliar and so far outside credibility. But usually that's just a sign that we don't spend enough time talking to people who think very differently to us.
We hope HN can be one of the better places to do that, but it requires us to come here with a spirit of openness.
And if we misaligned so much that we can't even agree on a point as base as "Do I have a right to exist", then that's when I know it's time to find another community. Those are the kinds of "curiosities" I'd not like to explore at this stage of my life.
Of course if anyone posts comments denying a minority in society's “right to exist”, that user would be banned on HN.