A ton of people on the progressive left (of which I consider myself a member) don’t really understand how the federal government works. They think the President is the boss of Congress and can basically just do whatever he wants, and if he threatens Senators and Representative in his party enough, he can get them to bend to his will. That he can just order Facebook to be broken up, that he can unilaterally fine Norfolk Southern $100 billion.
They think that because Democrats didn’t pass BBB and implement paid family leave and a higher minimum wage when they had full control of Congress, that it must mean Democrats only pretended to support those things, completely ignoring the reality that the majority only existed because of a conservative Democrat from West Virginia that actually backs the party on most issues except the most expansive.
The fact is, Biden has had some pretty incredible liberal legislative victories with the smallest of Congressional majorities. The American Rescue Plan that continues to support local governments, a historic climate change bill, a historic infrastructure bill, a historic investment in domestic chip manufacturing. He united NATO after a decade of stagnation and expanded it more than it had in 30 years. Obama would’ve loved to have accomplished any of those, and he had a big majority in both chambers his first two years.
Some analyses show we’re now on pace to meet net zero emissions by 2050, and there’s immense new investment because everyone wants the subsidies and knows the big, long-term green investments will pay off. If Biden did nothing else besides the climate bill and perform basic functioning of government, I would consider his presidency a massive success, but he’s done so much more than that.
Part of the difficulty being how much harder it is to build, make and do vs destroy and stall. The progressive left sees the fervent right tear down and block a lot when they have a slim majority and forget, in their righteous anger, that they’re asking for a much harder job and need a real majority.
What do we do to get out of this nightmare? Like… Specifically? How do we get the far-right to… Stop being far-right I guess? How do we get things built? How do we get good things to happen rather than, at best, stopping some bad thing from happening for at least a bit? It feels like that’s all we’ve been getting on a federal level lately… ~Cherri
The reply from mpa92643 that your reply is under went into detail about all the things that Biden and Democrats have done over the last few years. If you don’t think those are massive triumphs given the political climate and the very narrow majorities the Dems had, I don’t know what to tell you.
Those are things that weren’t just stopping bad things from happening.
Edit to address your question as well: the most substantive thing you can start with is voting Democrat and not any third party. Giving Democrats consistent and large enough majorities to combat the gerrymandering is vitally important to actually moving the country forward.
Sorry about that, I wasn’t doing too well last night. I’m just worried with how people like Ron DeSantis and Trump are just able to try doing a fascist coup and try to commit genocide against trans people with no legal consequences for either. Ron DeSantis tried (and failed, but still tried) to build his own personal paramilitary for god’s sake. And yet he’s still able to maintain power like none of that happened. It’s terrifying. ~Cherri
This is very well put. The people most cynical about Democrats are ironically the most naive in thinking that naming and shaming will force Republicans to vote the way you want.
A ton of people on the progressive left (of which I consider myself a member) don’t really understand how the federal government works. They think the President is the boss of Congress and can basically just do whatever he wants, and if he threatens Senators and Representative in his party enough, he can get them to bend to his will. That he can just order Facebook to be broken up, that he can unilaterally fine Norfolk Southern $100 billion.
They think that because Democrats didn’t pass BBB and implement paid family leave and a higher minimum wage when they had full control of Congress, that it must mean Democrats only pretended to support those things, completely ignoring the reality that the majority only existed because of a conservative Democrat from West Virginia that actually backs the party on most issues except the most expansive.
The fact is, Biden has had some pretty incredible liberal legislative victories with the smallest of Congressional majorities. The American Rescue Plan that continues to support local governments, a historic climate change bill, a historic infrastructure bill, a historic investment in domestic chip manufacturing. He united NATO after a decade of stagnation and expanded it more than it had in 30 years. Obama would’ve loved to have accomplished any of those, and he had a big majority in both chambers his first two years.
Some analyses show we’re now on pace to meet net zero emissions by 2050, and there’s immense new investment because everyone wants the subsidies and knows the big, long-term green investments will pay off. If Biden did nothing else besides the climate bill and perform basic functioning of government, I would consider his presidency a massive success, but he’s done so much more than that.
Part of the difficulty being how much harder it is to build, make and do vs destroy and stall. The progressive left sees the fervent right tear down and block a lot when they have a slim majority and forget, in their righteous anger, that they’re asking for a much harder job and need a real majority.
What do we do to get out of this nightmare? Like… Specifically? How do we get the far-right to… Stop being far-right I guess? How do we get things built? How do we get good things to happen rather than, at best, stopping some bad thing from happening for at least a bit? It feels like that’s all we’ve been getting on a federal level lately… ~Cherri
The reply from mpa92643 that your reply is under went into detail about all the things that Biden and Democrats have done over the last few years. If you don’t think those are massive triumphs given the political climate and the very narrow majorities the Dems had, I don’t know what to tell you.
Those are things that weren’t just stopping bad things from happening.
Edit to address your question as well: the most substantive thing you can start with is voting Democrat and not any third party. Giving Democrats consistent and large enough majorities to combat the gerrymandering is vitally important to actually moving the country forward.
Sorry about that, I wasn’t doing too well last night. I’m just worried with how people like Ron DeSantis and Trump are just able to try doing a fascist coup and try to commit genocide against trans people with no legal consequences for either. Ron DeSantis tried (and failed, but still tried) to build his own personal paramilitary for god’s sake. And yet he’s still able to maintain power like none of that happened. It’s terrifying. ~Cherri
This is very well put. The people most cynical about Democrats are ironically the most naive in thinking that naming and shaming will force Republicans to vote the way you want.
Well said