DISCLAIMER: I’M NOT FROM USA.
From the outside looking in, it seems like at least half of the inaction of the “left” is because ol’ Chucky just hinders everything.
“We wrote a strong letter” was probably the first time I actually, genuinely didn’t understand how he’s still the leader of the party.
Since then I’ve done some digging, and it seems like the guy is actually quite delusional. Not even his imaginary friends vote for him, which is kinda sad. Understandable though.
Now he’s talking about voting on whether they should block the military action in Venezuela. The ongoing one. The one that’s been planned publicly for months.
So, how does he still have his job?
politicians are the least accountable poeple in Murica (probably in the continent)
His job is to lose and stall when instructed to by nazis, and he is a goddamn genius at doing it (though a dumbass for failing to see how dumb it is to do that)
Point is, he’s doing his job: losing.
What mechanism would you suggest be used to change that?
The problem is simple. Congress and Senate treat their job like jobs. Not sworn duties.
At the end of the day they don’t give a damn about the USA and will always accept checks from special interest.
When you consider that the Democrats’ job is to offer only token resistance and lose elections, you realize he’s doing his “job” very well.
The fact of the matter is that if Democrats had been elected, there would have been no invasion of Venezuela, nor Iraq two decades ago.
Let us not kid ourselves. Non-voting eligible American voters let trump take the reins again, with control of Congress and the Supreme Court, knowing he could pull shit like this at any moment, yet still sat on their lazy asses TWO Election Days, fondling their purity, bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL, and now they’re like… “C’mon Schumer… dazzle me and my most excellent purity over here!”
Elections have huge consequences, so spare us the righteous outrage. Whatever blood gets spilled, it’s also on those soft, tender, lily-white hands of non-voting deadweights.
Also, twice is a pattern: “Vote for a woman?!! Me?!! When PIGS FLY!!!”It’s easier to complain and blame the “other” instead of the actual people doing the deed, it seems. I am so sick of the generation of people who like to say that all “blank” are the same - instead of looking for something worth fighting/voting for. Nuance takes time and paying attention takes away from the fun things. Local politics is easier to discern which of the parties is actually governing, so the least that can be done is voting for the party in your local elections that actually falls parallel to your values (or is the closest) - but again, it’s easier to just complain than to actually do something about it.
Biden increased sanctions on Venezuela.
During the Venezuelan election, when the US-backed opposition leader said that he wouldn’t give the oilfields back to the US, Biden had their financial support cut off and arrested opposition members living in the US.
The Venezuelan policy is bipartisan.
There hasn’t been a single war that the DNC hasn’t been bloodthirsty to get into. Iraq was bipartisan and Biden expanded the bounty on Maduro to $25m. House Democrats just gave $8b more in funding than what was requested for war.
Correct. Instead, dems would have declined to roll back any of those laws “so we have something to campaign on next time” until voters get fed up with their ineffectiveness and vote R next time. THEN, we get the invasions.
Think of it like a ratchet mechanism. He’s not there to move things left, he’s there to keep things in place while the right takes a little break to twist up the tension even more.
That’s how the left works in the US now: They’re not actually there to create change or movement, they just hold the place and keep things from moving until the right can get back in power. They don’t do anything but act as a placeholder for real change - they hold their position until the right puts their screws into things again and twists us further to the right.
It’s…ridiculously obvious once you notice it.
Fun fact Chuck Schumer doesn’t even pretend that he works in favor of his Democratic constituents. No Chuck Schumer’s entire career is based off of serving the needs of the Baileys. A fictional couple he invented that he bases all of his ideals rhetoric and legislation around. They are Republican. Look this up if you never heard before it’s the weirdest fucking thing.
Oh yeah, Baileys are the imaginary friends I was referring to. Thanks for reminding me!
The Democrats are cowards and fucking terrible politicians. They’re also owned by big money as much as the Republicans.
The entire US Congress except like 4 people needs to fucking go. Not just Schumer.
That’s a fair point. Almost seems like a two-party system is fundamentally flawed.
Yeah it’s part of the problem. I think it’s exacerbated by the fact that the US basically legalized bribery with Citizens United.
Fairness doctrine being abolished was the end of America.
It’s one bullet point on a long list that got us here. Installing a Christian nationalist dictatorship has been the right’s goal for 50+ years.
People give the fairness doctrine too much credit; First it’s partially responsible for the current mentality of all opinions matter no matter how stupid. But more importantly it only ever applied to broadcast TV and Radio, not cable or satellite, or the Internet. So it never would have applied to Fox News, for instance.
It’s not a silver bullet, but it was a very useful way to ensure people didn’t become radicalized by just listening to one side lie constantly. There’s a reason why Reagan and Nixon wanted it gone, and we’re living through the repercussions of not having it now; radicalized far right extremists everywhere and in control of the government. Also, we could have made updates to expand it or introduce new legislation to curb extremism on other platforms.
Definitely far from perfect but better than our current reality.
On the contrary, lots of people were radicalized by hearing people like new age healers given the same airtime as medical doctors.
It’s taken 20 years to fail at making the publicly funded internet a utility. The purpose of the doctrine was to govern publicly owned airwaves. I strongly believe it would have been and is impossible to expand the FCCs jurisdiction to include privately owned networks. I also strongly believe that the current administration would abuse the fuck out of these regulations.
Yet here we are, with some people believing vaccines cause autism and the far right extremists to boot. I personally would’ve taken more idiots harming themselves with their new age junk than what we got.
Don’t misunderstand, I agree it absolutely wouldn’t have been a catch all and even in its time it lacked the teeth to do much but at least it was something. It combined with a stronger education system could’ve prevented a lot of what we’re dealing with now.
More legalized. Lobbying was already legalized bribery. Citizens United was just them making sure they get to pick who they bribe.
And also allowed them to bribe anonymously, don’t forget that very important part.
I think it’s not even the fundamental flaws that make it so bad (they could theoretically be worked-around or fixed), I think at some point the system was captured by a group that to this day ensures both parties remain ineffectual and operate towards the same war goals.
Saying “the whole thing is a pantomine” seems like a lazy throwaway remark from some stranger you meet at a bar or your disillusioned uncle, and yet it’s exactly the conclusion you have to come to. We are controlled by the illusion of democracy and illusion of own influence
They’re also owned by big money as much as the Republicans.
Idiotic takes like that are as much of the problem as anything else.
Holy hell, the number of know-nothings who upvoted that nonsense…
If you don’t think the Dems and MAGA serve the same Sociopathic Oligarchs, you are delusional.
They are like the management tier in your workplace. Some managers are pretty cool, and some are terroristic assholes who make every moment at work agonizing. But despite the difference in approach, they both want you to toe the company line, and put the company’s interests ahead of EVERYTHING. Nice or not, they both want to enslave and exploit you on behalf of the company.
We’d all rather work under the nice manager, but if we really want to make the workplace work for the workers, then we have to make the managers fear the workers enough that they appeal the top. That’s unlikely, and eventually we will be forced to bypass them, and take our grievances to the top ourselves.
Yes, there’s a point to what you’re saying, but to paint with the same broad brush upon them both is not only delusional at best, but in real-world terms, actually toxic in terms of influencing voting bases. Shame on you.
Just look at the public voting records of Congress going back ages, and see how Dems (warts and all) actually do the right thing most of the time. Decade after decade…
When people bang their drums upon ‘money playing a part of politics’ being outrageous, unexpected and ‘breaking the system,’ what they’re really saying is that they fundamentally don’t understand capitalism… the very system they grew up in.
“Both sides being the same” is beyond an idiotic, false narrative, and any decent history or political scholar can tell you just that. It’s the message of dictators and oligarchs really, upon close examination.
There may have been more difference in the past, but after watching the Dems do literally NOTHING to blunt MAGA’s return during the entire Biden administration, and almost helping them take back the country. Biden put the case in the hands of his AG, and he managed to find the most unmotivated REPUBLICAN of all time to do the job, who gave them a 2 year head start. The Dems deserve a significant amount of the blame.
The Dems obviously don’t want to make things to difficult for the Sociopathic Oligarchs. Look at the last shutdown. They let people lose their food assistance for a few weeks, but the minute it started to hit the airports, and the corporations couldn’t move their operatives around, the Dems folded within 48 hours, and surrendered with absolutely nothing in return.
Either the Dems are in cahoots, or they are cowardly and negligent. Either way, the result is the same, so who cares if there is a technical distinction?
It’s pretty simple really he gets money from Israel and the oligarchs to pretend he’s opposed to things in the weakest and least convincing way possible. He’s doing a good job at the job of pretending to be opposed to facism while preventing any movement left so he continues to get paid to do that.
This is, sadly, how it seems to be. Both he and Hakeem Jeffries seem to obstruct real opposition from the Democratic Party against Trump and the Right in any meaningful way.
It’s every democrat since Clinton and every Republican since Reagan. Carter was the last real president this country had.
The simplest explanation is that the oligarchs have assured him he’ll continue getting his salary if he continues being ineffective.
because the capitalists like him there
They’re the party of the status quo. They’ll probably take 50 years to reinstate the rights lost by this administration.
I can alreadyhear them now. “We need something to campaign on next time.” As though doing your fucking job isn’t something you can campaign on.
The Baileys’ votes each count as 100,000+ votes
His job is U.S. Senator, which he holds because he received the most votes from the state of New York. “Senate Minority Leader” is a position he holds because no one else wants it. It’s not a Constitutional position, like Speaker of the House or President of the Senate, and the U.S. Senate is a house of equals. Being “minority leader”bestows no added power, only responsibility for representing his party when negotiating with the other party. If another Senate Democrat wants to be responsible for negotiating with a senile man-child, they can call for a vote whenever the minority caucus meets.
And like Pelosi, he received the most votes from the state of New York because, “That’s our guy!” We gotta fight these people where they live.
Mitch McConnell had the game down pat. He’d campaign like hell in Kentucky, be damned what the rest of the US thought of him. He’s shaken the hands of 10s of thousands of little old ladies who say, “That Mitch sure is a nice man!” (got that last bit from an article about how he worked his campaigns, not making it up)
Jesus, if lemmy only knew about Orrin Hatch or Robert Byrd (KKK member!). 🙄 Those dirtbags lasted for decade after decade after decade by appealing to their constituents, not the US as a whole.
Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill: “All politics is local.”
Side note, Mamdani has this game figured out! Except he went out and listened to his voters, of all sorts. Fascinating man to watch. No talking points shoe-horned in as replies, no sound bites, legitimate listening skills and answers. Bill Clinton was such a master. We will watch his career with great interest!
which he holds because he received the most votes from the state of New York
Technically?
What do you mean?
Technically, he’s in office because he won an election. But he did that by being in the pocket of numerous lobbies and in the good graces of the Democrats’ campaign operation. If you don’t do those things, your odds of winning are vanishingly small. So he’s borderline untouchable.
Oh, the other Democrat candidates withdrew and no other parties are popular:
https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_Senate_election_in_New_York,_2022
I would expect lobbies to play a decent part in this but I’m not sure I’ve seen the mechanics fleshed out.
As a voter in New York, what are the options coming up to the next election that help remove him and impede the far right groups?
How did Mamdani take NYC against a filthy-rich opponent (Cuomo) with literal billionaires and the national conservative machine standing against him?
AOC was a bartender and took her House seat, untouchable now.
Obama was a nobody from Illinois. People heard him speak at the 2004 Democratic National Convention (me included!) and jumped onboard.
Clinton took the Presidency as an unheard-of governor of a hick state nobody cared about. And a Democrat in that state no less!
They all did it without big money, against wealthier opponents and won by talking to their people and listening. The formula works.
