She received over $15,000,000.00 in AIPAC donations. Hrmmm...
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If Stevens had just stayed hidden in the Republican cloakroom for a little while longer, no one would ever have known.
And no, I'm not even joking: that's literally where she's been hiding.
The "moderate" Dems are just Republicans in sheep's clothing. It's a large reason why the symbolism behind removing Jefferies and Schumer is so important and not merely symbolic.
Adam Hamilton who was just elected to Senate in Kansas was a Republican less than a year ago.
We have to start acknowledging that we now have a THIRD party - The Israel Party - that straddles both of the traditional parties. Many legislators are more loyal to the Israeli Party than either of the trad political parties. Dems like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, or Jared Moskowitz, will side with Israel before they support Democrats.
We need to encourage Democrats to NOT be part of the overlap.
I'm curious as to who you would define as these "moderate democrats" outside of Haley Stevens and John Fetterman
Your mistake is that you believe there are only “two sides”
While the MAGA Nazis may walk in lockstep with Adolf Trump’s ‘vision', the rest of us have comes from a diverse group with a myriad of our own interests. and our greatest weakness? Our inability to work together to accomplish our collective goals.
Far greater than the Republicans, that is our greatest enemy we must overcome: our inability to work with our own allies to accomplish our collective goals. Democrats never fight any enemy harder than their own allies. That stupid and it must end immediately.
Edit: oh, you all CAN work together, apparently. Too bad it’s in service of the Nazis rather than trying to defeat them…
The fact that we both don't like the psychotic dude over there doesn't make us friends.
Okay, now define what you actually want to do. Because if all you want to do is shut him up or impeach him without any reforms to the systems that allowed him to actually gain power then we don't really have much to actually talk about. If you do have suggestions for economic, media, governmental, and even religious reforms then we do have something to talk about.
Fact of the matter is the circumstances that have lead to Trump are not isolate and if you want to not only defeat the person but also the ideology you must rip it apart at the roots.
What I want to do? Gee, I didn’t know I suddenly got elected to the office.
Lol
I was trying to illistrate a point about how even if folks may technically agree that something is an issue they may or may not agree on how to solve said issue via dialog with you, mostly cause you were so quick to decry the active political friction that makes action rough at best. Which is to say I was trying to use a rhetorical strategy to make a point, which funnily enough your non answer illustrated quite well.
While it may seem silly such dialogs amongst laymen is useful. Also I may have listened to some Socratic dialogues early and my brain is currently in a very argument happy state right now and will probably be that way for the next couple days, don't know if that's better that the depressive state I got into after reading Of mice and men.
Oh, right, you were just trying to have a “dialogue“.
lol
Aye, that I was. I like arguing and a dialogue is simply are an argument where I don't start throwing profanities around like a fish hawker.
The rest of us just call that sort of adversarial, bad-faith bullshit “trolling”
Like what you're doing here?
If you think dialogue is the same thing as adversarial bad-faith trolling, then you might be the troll...
Really? I know what a straw man is. Let's look at the comment chain
Aye, that I was. I like arguing and a dialogue is simply are an argument where I don't start throwing profanities around like a fish hawker.
The rest of us just call that sort of adversarial, bad-faith bullshit “trolling”
If you think dialogue is the same thing as adversarial bad-faith trolling, then you might be the troll...
Yeah no, that's pretty definitively the user was calling dialogue "trolling," which is exactly what I called them out on. In other words, not a straw man.
Thats not what trolling is.
Since when do you need to be elected to office before you can express an opinion for the direction you think the country should go?
If holding political office was about doing what the elected representatives want, and not what's best for their constituents, then what we have wouldn't be a representative democracy. It would be an oligarchy.
Comments like yours sound like pro-oligarchy.
Gee, it sure seems easy to win an argument when you make your own rules.
Ignore what I said, pretend I said something else, and then hold it against me.

Is this how you deal with every troublesome situation? You just pretend something else happened that you can get yourself out of rather than deal with what really occurred?
See, this is what I mean by bad faith trolling. Come back with something rational or don’t come back at all.
When did I make up any rules?
This is what you said:
What I want to do? Gee, I didn’t know I suddenly got elected to the office.
That seems to directly imply that you believe someone needs to be elected to office before they can talk about what they think should happen politically.
So what I said wasn't a strawman. It was a response directly to the content of what you said.
Is this how you deal with every troublesome situation? You just pretend something else happened that you can get yourself out of rather than deal with what really occurred?
This whole paragraph seems like projection because that describes pretty well what you're doing in multiple places in this thread. Just accusing people and being combative and antagonistic towards any semblance of dialogue.
See, this is what I mean by bad faith trolling. Come back with something rational or don’t come back at all.
It's like you're parodying logic. Is the obvious role reversal part of a joke that I'm not catching, or are you seriously this self-unaware?
Lol, that’s a lot of words for, “I can’t accept a responsibility for my actions, so I’m just gonna blame you instead“
And it’s still a stupid argument.
Bro you're the one being disingenuous.
“No u!” Isn’t a very convincing argument.
Do you keep that comeback in your back pocket to fling around anytime someone calls you out on your projection?
Like how every comment you make is blaming me for things you did? Or just something you made up?
It’s been well over six hours, and you still can’t get over some grievance you imagined and then blamed me far. Don’t you have anything better to do?
I’m going to enjoy knowing that you’re gonna keep throwing your piss baby tantrums over something you 100% manufactured from your own imagination.
I’m also going to enjoy watching you torture yourself with that bullshit until you finally learn the lesson to just drop it and move on.
Like how every comment you make is blaming me for things you did?
Point to a single time I did that.
Or just something you made up?
What? I pointed out exactly where you said the thing that I criticized you for. It seems you just can't handle critique, so no wonder you're so anti-dialogue.
It’s been well over six hours, and you still can’t get over some grievance you imagined and then blamed me far. Don’t you have anything better to do?
I'm literally only responding because you're still responding. It's not like I sat around all day waiting to hear back from you.
And what grievance? I critiqued your argument. Respond rationally, or get over it. What you're doing is being disingenuous.
I’m going to enjoy knowing that you’re gonna keep throwing your piss baby tantrums over something you 100% manufactured from your own imagination.
Again, that is 100% projection.
I’m also going to enjoy watching you torture yourself with that bullshit until you finally learn the lesson to just drop it and move on.
Again, that is 100% projection.
This place sucks for political discussion. We finally have a substantial Dem majority and all these people want to do is whine and complain about it instead of finding common ground with the huge number of moderate Dems we just elected.
Lemmy is 90% basement dwellers who have lost touch with reality at this point. If you suggest any kind of realism, or god forbid optimism, they'll lay you out for it.
We have a substantial majority and that's reason to be optimistic, yes.
But it's not reason to become complacent and cater to milquetoast centrism that only intends to appease the fascists while placating the masses and delivering nothing substantial.
We have a majority. We need to use it to deliver results with benefits people can feel, otherwise we won't keep it, and we'll backslide back into republican majorities again where they can continue furthering their destructive agenda.
These cycles have been going on as long as I've been alive. It's time to break that cycle. We need change, and we need it now, and if we don't succeed in that, not only is democracy as we know it going to die, but also society and the planet itself are going to die with it.
The fediverse largely has no understanding whatsoever of US civics. It's fucking ridiculous what idiots here think about how the government functions. Most of them just want the US to collapse not realizing there's a good chance they or someone they care about dies when that happens. Cuz it won't happen quiet like. It'll take down everything it can with it.
She's going to switch parties. They can have her. Then she'll lose her election in 2028.
send her and fetterfuck off to russia(siberia) to spend the rest of their terms on ice
Much like Sinema, there are MANY of these DINOs who act as Republican sleepers, just waiting for their activation to inflict the most damage. Once that capital is expended, well, then time to be open Republican.
Schumer, Jeffries, Stevens, Fetterman are Sinema. There are many more (e.g., DWS in FL, and Gilibrand in NY)
How are they getting elected in the first place? Are they making appealing campaign promises, then reneging on them or are they just put forth as “your local DNC appointed representative - what are you going to do, vote republican instead?”?
There's no requirement for politicians to uphold campaign promises, and no penalty to reneg, so yeah.
It's tough because the nature of a Representative Democracy means we should empower representatives to make decisions that we ourselves wouldn't necessarily make -- much like parents stopping children from eating candy every day. They should ideally have a full-time job of educating themselves, consulting experts, figuring out what is best for their constituents.
haha. Funny. I know.
But maybe there is a middle-ground where we can not keep them so rigid to campaign promises, but permit Recall votes at any time during their terms on any elected official -- even if the threshold may be higher at 60 or 70% to prevent too much knee-jerk reactivity.
Corruption can and should be treated as an act of treason to democracy, and should have legitimate criminal consequences.
The vast majority do not have a problem with representatives changing their opinions based on new information or empiric evidence. That's what is expected of moral and ethical leadership acting in good faith. The expectation is that there must be logical consistency, and actions must be based on attempts to do what is morally and ethically justifiable.
The problem is they don't even attempt to do any of that. They just lie to win and essentially tell their constituents to go fuck themselves. That is corruption, and lying only to defy the will of the people should be treated as the most serious crime possible in a democracy.
There's a lot to unpack on this but you've got gist.
At the root? America is just a very conservative country, and it has backwards laws on the books that only accelerates our downward spiral. It's made more conservative because the wealth gap has widened so much and billionaires and psychopathic corporations blindly pursuing profit only care about enriching themselves -- and they can now freely buy media megaphones and dupe the masses while simultaneously eroding education and making the electorate more short-sighted, easier to dupe. (Hence why Trump said, "I love the poorly educated" and "Smart people don't like me."
So the Overton Window drifts right; sensible policies that would be center-left by European or Canadian standards get painted as radical communism, etc.
Democrats as I noted in another comment below are timid because they're up against a more powerful force and partly corrupted from within themselves. The corrupt (and naive) have sold the party on the notion that, "Hey, we can never persuade the electorate. We can never compete with the megaphones of the right, so best we can do is be Republican-Lite, lest we're perceived as commies by the poorly educated electorate."
So Overton Window keeps being defined by the Right, so goes the country....
That is... Unless gas prices go up lol.
Edit: I should say there are things to be hopeful for. Talarico has a damn near AOC platform and just won Texas. A Sanders-backed progressive just beat Collins in Maine finally. A Medicare For All and Muslim just won the battleground state of Michigan. So the bullshit that progressivism doesn't sell and we have to cater to the blind has been largely debunked.
All conservatives are pathological liars. As crazy as living a lie would seem to a normal person, lying at all times is perfectly comfortable for conservatives. So they use that well-practiced skill to their advantage. A conservative will lie about what they want for lunch if they think it will benefit them in some small way.
Every word uttered by a conservative is deception or manipulation. Whether it's a politician, a colleague or dear, sweet grandma baking cookies, never trust any conservative. They are instinctive manipulators. Always have been.
Lol they’re not just Republican sleepers, they’re quite literally foreign nation assets as well. Cuba is unsurprisingly pretty good at this
I think they're the same picture, but even if, the output/consequences is the same.
Republicans are heavily compromised by Russia (and in general the BRICS orbit, more accurately), along with Israel, and domestic billionaire oligarchs.
Democrats are heavily compromised by Israel and domestic billionaire oligarchs as well, but since they're the lesser evil they also attract a subset of do-gooders trying to push back against the corruption. Our job is to amplify their voices to the best we can and broaden the work the likes of Sanders kicked off years ago.
Yeah, let's go back to the small tent and get rid of people who only agree with us 95% of the time. Screw having a sustainable electoral majority. Ideological Purity Now!
Has been a vassal for the Israeli state.
It seemed clear to me: Israeli handlers told her to jump, and she immediately obliged.
Good riddance to her. I can only hope to see all of them kicked out of our government and military affairs during my lifetime.
Was it Jeffries that vetted her?
Can't wait to hear more of the excuses from centrist on how she and the rest of the centrist Democrats aren't literally embarrassed Republicans.
So many of these Dixiecrat MF'ers have unmasked themselves in the past two decades.
Don't you mean with israel?
Please run for speaker, you have years to become President, please guide the house to a realistic future...ok, nvm, power is all.../s?


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