It's really depressing how the US system seems to have existed "on belief". Once somebody set out to damage or destroy it, away it went. Pretty much without a whimper.
As I recall, the system was set up with 3 branches of government in tension. Obviously, that was naive.
All societies are consensus realities wholly dependent upon participation.
The system was fine but no one has yet constructed a system that can withstand weaponized mass stupidity. Even the ones created to combat corruption fail to account for this danger.
It's not going away with a whimper, the supreme court is killing it on purpose. There are laws that created departments that the president does not have the power to destroy. There is also the impoundment act that forbid a president from redirecting or not spending appropriated money. These laws are being ignored because the supreme court has gone full partisan.
One study estimates that the Supreme Court will be "conservative" [1] for at least the next 100 years. If Dems don't try to do something to represent 50% of the country that is panicking then they're complicit.
[1] tearing down hundreds of years of precedent is not conservative, this is an extremist court.
> One study estimates that the Supreme Court will be "conservative" [1] for at least the next 100 years.
Not really. A party needs 2/3 majority to impeach a judge. There’s a possibility Democrats can have that majority after next midterms. But the problem with Democrats is that they almost always follow laws and aren’t radical lunatics like republicans. Even after last election, HN felt pretty Red leaning, so that stupidity fever caught a lot of otherwise sane people.
It's really depressing how the US system seems to have existed "on belief".
Word up.
Most people that ever lived, lived under some authoritarian or unjust rule. Some lived in a full terror state. Americans are just so lucky and take so much for granted. One can ponder, “what was the moment it all happened?” - there wasn’t a moment. It’s a total frog boiling in water situation. We’ve been boiling. Taste the water, it’s frog soup. Given that this admin has 3 more years, it’ll be frog bone broth once the bones melt.
It is so fucking crazy that if you actually let the unintellectual border-line savage illiterates fulfill their chaotic fantasies that you truly do get a backward bumble fuck country. Anyway, I’m going back to my regular programming of watching Mexican farmers jump from buildings to their death as they run from ICE, and my president sell scam crypto and sneakers and shit.
> the unintellectual border-line savage illiterates fulfill their chaotic fantasies that you truly do get a backward bumble fuck country
it's ok if you don't have energy to understand otherwise rn, but please know that there's more to it than this. to understand is the only way out that's not total war.
Many developed nations made fun of our delusional checks and balances concept for a long time
We collectively dismiss external criticism on flimsy rationales like there never being a military coup here, or even more amusingly “at least we can talk about it” as if that is good enough, or is unique to the US at all
All systems exist ‘on belief’. And it’s objectively done better than all other known systems it has been running concurrently with (in both longevity and impact).
> it’s objectively done better than all other known systems (in longevity and impact)
I think the US is probably the country which has had the greatest positive impact on the world in the last 150 years (purely a personal opinion). But even so, we’ve only been around like 300 years total. It’s crazy to say that we have _objectively_ had the biggest and longest impact, when there are civilizations that existed for so much longer, and which made massive contributions to the world.
I guess I’m just missing it, I’ve re-read the thread and it still seems like you’re discussing the US? What am I missing? The parent comment you replied to is
> It's really depressing how the US system seems to have existed "on belief". Once somebody set out to damage or destroy it, away it went. Pretty much without a whimper.
As I recall, the system was set up with 3 branches of government in tension. Obviously, that was naive.
‘systems it has been running concurrently with’. Aka during the same times.
What other gov’t during the same time period has lasted as long or longer (none that I am aware of), let alone has produced prosperity, etc. to the same extent?
People who keep parroting this take are the most hypocritical bunch I have ever seen. Because if the premise is true then when these institutions existed then those were also voted by taxpayers to exist, right? But that time these “taxpayers” made noise about how government can’t be trusted and majority is muzzling their right of speech and first amendment etc etc. Now they when they are in the majority they turn around and say stuff like majority rules, government can be trusted etc.
And I know people like to play both sides so let me add. The big government hoopla exists only on one side.
well the republican party has been talking for decades about removing EPA, DOE, etc. and has gotten lots of votes on those premises, so "they" make good on that promise and now the "voter has been lied to"? you could have made the same claim if the republicabs did nothing.
We can actually show that the American public are lied to, and continue to be lied to.
Yes - I can get the point you are making - “democracy for me but not for thee” is BS. Sure!
But the evidence is that theres one media network which is simply selling whatever story works, along side a 50+ year effort to kill trust in institutions. We can even show that the republican machinery gave up on bipartisanship - hell, it’s even public knowledge.
But that wouldn’t make a whit of a difference to voting patterns, or your point. Because your point doesn’t need to be based in the long history of complicated malfeasance that rots all English speaking democracies. It’s anchored in your current state and argument.
A lot of comments are rightfully pointing out the destructive nature of this move. But looking at it from another angle, is it possible this is a symptom of a deeper problem?
What if a significant portion of the electorate no longer believes institutions like the EPA are neutral arbiters of science, but instead see them as political actors pushing an agenda? If that belief is widespread, is an action like this seen not as 'destruction', but as 'dismantling a biased system', even if it seems counterproductive to the rest of us?
> What if a significant portion of the electorate no longer believes institutions like the EPA are neutral arbiters of science, but instead see them as political actors pushing an agenda?
This is clearly the case. The next question is, how did this happen? Did these people come to this conclusion based on their own diligent research, or were they led to this opinion by supremely funded vested interests that influence every branch of our society?
A significant portion of the electorate believes that the government is hiding aliens, or that the political leadership are all secretly lizard people (whether this is meant literally or as a metaphor for Jews or whether they think Jews are secretly lizard people depends on the person). There are vast and necessary government functions that most of the electorate doesn't understand or doesn't value or completely misunderstands.
Even on hacker news I frequently see people completely misunderstanding how, for instance, scientific research gets funded in the US. And the readership of this site is far more likely than a random sample of Americans to know about scientific research.
Dismantling chunks of the government based on the ignorance of some portion of the electorate is just bad policy.
"Do you believe that shape-shifting reptilian
people control our world by taking on human
form and gaining political power to manipulate
our societies, or not?"
11% said yes or were unsure.
That's from 2013, so I can't even begin to imagine what a poll from today would look like.
> What if a significant portion of the electorate no longer believes institutions like the EPA are neutral arbiters of science, but instead see them as political actors pushing an agenda?
They do, but it’s not a belief they came upon accidentally. It was pushed over decades using billions of dollars and multiple media conglomerates.
One of the most onerous regulation regimes in the USA comes from the FAA.
When people question these regulations, and the cost of certifying aircraft and aircraft parts, someone always rightly responds "these regulations are written in blood."
The same can easily be said about environmental regulations, except in their case, the pool of blood is orders of magnitude deeper.
Do people really think that President Richard Nixon created the EPA to stick it to big business?
Step 2: Cut taxes on the rich. <---------- You are here
It works every time. Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson said: “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
Let’s see how the rural poor feel when their hospital closes, they can’t get medicaid, health insurance is wildly out of reach, they have no ability to borrow money thanks to insane medical debt that they can never repay, and their wages are garnished for student debt from a degree they never finished. How long until debt becomes a crime?
> Let’s see how the rural poor feel when their hospital closes, they can’t get medicaid [...]
There's been research on that [1]. They become even more likely to vote Republican. Here's the abstract:
> Who do citizens hold responsible for outcomes and experiences? Hundreds of rural hospitals have closed or significantly reduced their capacity since just 2010, leaving much of the rural U.S. without access to emergency health care. I use data on rural hospital closures from 2008 to 2020 to explore where and why hospital closures occurred as well as who–if anyone–rural voters held responsible for local closures. Despite closures being over twice as likely to occur in the Republican-controlled states that did not expand Medicaid, closures were associated with reduced support for federal Democrats and the Affordable Care Act following local closures. I show that rural voters who lost hospitals were roughly 5–10 percentage points more likely to vote Republican in subsequent presidential elections. If anything state Republicans seemed to benefit in rural areas from rejecting Medicaid and resulting rural health woes following the passage of the ACA. These results have important implications for population health and political accountability in the U.S.
The trend you described has been going on since Reagan, and the "rural poor" haven't budged. I have no expectation that attitudes will change in Rural America, not matter how bad things get.
These are the reasons many voted for Trump. His ability to tear down American institutions is a direct result of the apathy born out of decades of successful corporate corruption, or lobbying, if you prefer, that we failed to stop democratically.
But it is wrong to think all American generations before ours didn't have to fight. The lie is that democracy was ever easy. There are millions of Americans mobilizing, sharing their stories, marching, talking to their representatives, protesting, and following their conscience. It is easier than ever to find and join the peaceful opposition.
Well, that leads to another narrative trick called “see these are examples of how big government doesn’t work and the other side asking for increased government and hospitals are socialist and going to waste your tax dollars or give to freeloaders like immigrants etc”. Destroy government based support, blame it as failure of government, rinse and repeat.
It’s because he only knows how to destroy, not build, and destroying is always easier than building. It may be impactful but it is going to set America back decades.
Reminds me of reading about Karl Marx in college. As I recall he basically made a name for himself talking shit about capitalism. Then, people said, "Bro, if capitalism sucks so much, why don't you come up with something better?" And that's how The Communist Manifesto was born, which was a total disaster, and set humanity back generations.
Talking shit and tearing stuff down is easy. Building something is hard.
He's destroying for various reasons yes. But he knows how to build. Perhaps not personally, but he can wrangle a system to do things for him, mostly for him perhaps. OK completely for himself, but that's not to say he can't.
The only thing he has ever directed that has been a net positive to society, Operation Warp Speed, is something he disowns because of the rabid anti-science stance of his base.
There’s not a lot the opposition can do. Elections have consequences and now people are gonna have to live with it. People stayed home or decided to vote against their own interest. It’s not like there wasn’t a previous track record to compare. Selective amnesia is not an excuse.
> Elections have consequences and now people are gonna have to live with it.
yes they do, but it seems dems favorability are fading [0]
> People stayed home or decided to vote against their own interest.
it seems like the democrats standard mode of operation is to always wait for the opposition to screw up everything (2008, 2020) and then anoint some weak candidates (2016, 2020, 2024) and run on "we're better vote for us" and then get run over at the next election cause they didn't do much as expected (and their horrible messaging) [1]
the democrats need to clear out their decrepit leadership or its just gonna continue to slide worse and worse
I don’t disagree. But nobody should be surprised by everything that’s happening right now. Most people justified their vote by saying he’s either joking or it won’t happen to me or my loved ones and are getting buyers remorse now. There were two options and one was much worse than the other.
Frankly, the Democratic party epically and massively failed their constituency by first running a mummy and then attempting to run perhaps the most unlikable, unrelatable, disconnected candidate of my lifetime - that literally zero people voted for.
It's not the people's fault, it's the party's... the party thought everyone would just jump when told to do so.
How was Kamala Harris more disconnected than, say, Mitt Romney, a billionaire who said that half of voters believed they were victims and were mooching off the government?
Or for that matter, how is she less disconnected than Donald Trump, who bragged about being able to get away with sexually assaulting people because he's famous?
Have any sort of policy position and not run on the "at least I'm not him" platform.
In an era where Republicans are dismantling the government do you know what Dems will run on? That's right, dismantling the government, but in a kinder gentler way (see Ezra Kline's abundance agenda).
Dems are anemic to running on popular positions. Raise the minimum wage, expand Medicare, restore the institutions Republicans are dismantling.
Both parties are serving the wealthy. That's what prevents Dems from serving the working class. They know not to advocate raising the minimum wage.
It's what has created the behavior where Dems try to win over right wing independents because that's a more donor friendly position and Republicans can purely pander to their based, because they're already donor friendly (you know, for example, Republicans will always act to the benefit of big oil).
Like? It's hard to do anything when the executive, legislative, and judicial branches are all controlled by the same party. Until midterms, there's not much that can be done at the federal level. States can oppose some issues, and some States are, but what exactly do you think the opposition can/should be doing that they aren't already?
Connecting with people, building a mass movement, organizing institutions that can funnel people and effort into building the world and election results they want. Taking risks by taking a stand on issues and saying those issues are the reason to vote for them (not to avoid having the other side win). Doing local politics to demonstrate competence and show that they care and are building things, then show off those things to the rest of the country and say “look, we can do this everywhere” or at least “look at what we can do on a small scale but our vision is bigger and it’s limited by the fact our vision needs to happen on a national scale and can’t be achieved fully at this small scale”. Lots of things.
IMHO, it's already too late for the midterms. In fact, it's probably too late for the 2028 presidential election, too. Democrats need to connect, and that connection isn't from showing up, out of nowhere, three months before an election and taking policy. The connection starts years before the election, by associating oneself to the things the voters also associate with. I think one of the most brilliant things Trump ever did was to get involved with WWE. That started the connection with Rural America. It was long before he ran for president, and it wasn't boring policy talk. It was, "Look at me! I'm your guy! I'm into wrestling, just like you!" Now, this is nothing new - Clinton played the sax on Arsenio Hall. But I think the Democrats are just terrible at it. And here's a great example: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMIuyMQRAq1
(1) Actually have a coordinated plan would be the starting point.
(2) If the left truly wanted to help the American people like they say they do they need the programs they enact to actually work. Say what you want about Trump but he is effective. But then again, all authoritarians are.
Currently there isn't much they can do, but they handed the election to a corrupt buffoon.
Inaction the border & immigration, letting the woke crowd run rampant with their nonsense(not talking about it doesn't make it go away), and selecting a VP that if ever tasked with running for President--wasn't likely to win.
American voters always look to the Dems and Republicans as if it’s a symmetric game.
So, one party puts up a person who encouraged and insurrection, has no coherent policy, ZERO moral standing, had security documents in a toilet, ran a crypto pump and dump scheme on the day of his inauguration, and wins.
But ALL of those things are not meaningful.
If one team comes to play football, and the other team brings in a posse of clowns who don’t play football, and the clowns win - then the game you are playing isn’t football. Hell, both teams should have fielded equally outrageous clowns. (This is what happens in completely corrupt nations, and America’s likely fate)
Playing a better game of football, is not as important as figuring out how the other team’s moves are legal.
In all earnestness - The question people really need to ask is not how the Dems lost, it’s how Trump ran in the first place.
Biden had an identical border policy to Trump term 1. Dems even tried to strengthen ice towards the end of Biden's term.
The fact that you think he was weak on the border really shows that Dems trying to out Republican Republicans on the border is a bad move. They should have been pushing for immigration reform and better/faster routes to becoming documented.
> letting the woke crowd run rampant with their nonsense
What does this mean?
> selecting a VP that if ever tasked with running for President--wasn't likely to win.
That's pretty typical. The much bigger problem is Biden ran while knowing his polling was in the gutter. It was him running with sundowning symptoms.
Harris's problem was that while knowing about Biden's unpopularity, she refused to distance our distinguish herself from him in any way.
Be better (like doing it at all) of saying what they have accomplished. People don't know what they zone know. Make a list of things accomplished and say it out loud. Humility could be another way that democracy dies.
To be fair, it's hard for the Dems to do anything effectively when a sitting president attempts to overthrow an election, fails, and then half of the voters think "You know what, I want that guy to lead our country again."
Not that they're blameless, of course - they had four years to throw Trump in prison, did nothing, and now we're reaping the result. But the problem goes much deeper than the Dems being incompetent. In a functioning democracy, voters aren't supposed to elect someone who literally committed treason, just because the alternative is "unlikeable" (what the fuck does that even mean, next to Trump).
It's really depressing how the US system seems to have existed "on belief". Once somebody set out to damage or destroy it, away it went. Pretty much without a whimper.
As I recall, the system was set up with 3 branches of government in tension. Obviously, that was naive.
All societies are consensus realities wholly dependent upon participation.
The system was fine but no one has yet constructed a system that can withstand weaponized mass stupidity. Even the ones created to combat corruption fail to account for this danger.
So.
The EPA sits under the executive branch. Thus the chief executive (President) has the say on how the executive functions.
There are limitations, but if a research arm was created purely by executive power, then it can be stopped through executive power.
The system works as intended.
It's not going away with a whimper, the supreme court is killing it on purpose. There are laws that created departments that the president does not have the power to destroy. There is also the impoundment act that forbid a president from redirecting or not spending appropriated money. These laws are being ignored because the supreme court has gone full partisan.
One study estimates that the Supreme Court will be "conservative" [1] for at least the next 100 years. If Dems don't try to do something to represent 50% of the country that is panicking then they're complicit.
[1] tearing down hundreds of years of precedent is not conservative, this is an extremist court.
> One study estimates that the Supreme Court will be "conservative" [1] for at least the next 100 years.
Not really. A party needs 2/3 majority to impeach a judge. There’s a possibility Democrats can have that majority after next midterms. But the problem with Democrats is that they almost always follow laws and aren’t radical lunatics like republicans. Even after last election, HN felt pretty Red leaning, so that stupidity fever caught a lot of otherwise sane people.
> If Dems don't try to do something about to represent 50% of the country that is panicking then they're complicit.
Uh. What are they supposed to do with a Republican trifecta? Do you mean "win votes in future elections so they can govern?"
When they get power again they need to challenge the court's extremism. I've seen ideas like term limits or packing the court with more than 9 judges.
> When they get power again
Hard to see a path to Dems winning a Senate majority.
Ideally there will be enough representation in congress to remove justices like Thomas for blatant corruption / conflict of interest.
Republicans have been attacking government and destabilizing society for decades. This has not happened overnight and it won't be fixed overnight.
It's really depressing how the US system seems to have existed "on belief".
Word up.
Most people that ever lived, lived under some authoritarian or unjust rule. Some lived in a full terror state. Americans are just so lucky and take so much for granted. One can ponder, “what was the moment it all happened?” - there wasn’t a moment. It’s a total frog boiling in water situation. We’ve been boiling. Taste the water, it’s frog soup. Given that this admin has 3 more years, it’ll be frog bone broth once the bones melt.
It is so fucking crazy that if you actually let the unintellectual border-line savage illiterates fulfill their chaotic fantasies that you truly do get a backward bumble fuck country. Anyway, I’m going back to my regular programming of watching Mexican farmers jump from buildings to their death as they run from ICE, and my president sell scam crypto and sneakers and shit.
Shout out to the American Dream.
> the unintellectual border-line savage illiterates fulfill their chaotic fantasies that you truly do get a backward bumble fuck country
it's ok if you don't have energy to understand otherwise rn, but please know that there's more to it than this. to understand is the only way out that's not total war.
and yes, i'm angry too.
I don't understand. And as far as the can tell, the only thing preventing total war is the belief that it might be possible to fix it next year.
And no matter who wins, the other side will be convinced it was by cheating. And that has no alternative but total war.
I have looked long and hard for an alternative but I'm not seeing one.
isn't this the separation of powers working though? for once the trump administration has waited for judicial review to act.
Many developed nations made fun of our delusional checks and balances concept for a long time
We collectively dismiss external criticism on flimsy rationales like there never being a military coup here, or even more amusingly “at least we can talk about it” as if that is good enough, or is unique to the US at all
All systems exist ‘on belief’. And it’s objectively done better than all other known systems it has been running concurrently with (in both longevity and impact).
> it’s objectively done better than all other known systems (in longevity and impact)
I think the US is probably the country which has had the greatest positive impact on the world in the last 150 years (purely a personal opinion). But even so, we’ve only been around like 300 years total. It’s crazy to say that we have _objectively_ had the biggest and longest impact, when there are civilizations that existed for so much longer, and which made massive contributions to the world.
You might want to re-read my comment.
I made no such long term or meta claims.
I guess I’m just missing it, I’ve re-read the thread and it still seems like you’re discussing the US? What am I missing? The parent comment you replied to is
> It's really depressing how the US system seems to have existed "on belief". Once somebody set out to damage or destroy it, away it went. Pretty much without a whimper. As I recall, the system was set up with 3 branches of government in tension. Obviously, that was naive.
‘systems it has been running concurrently with’. Aka during the same times.
What other gov’t during the same time period has lasted as long or longer (none that I am aware of), let alone has produced prosperity, etc. to the same extent?
And it isn’t actually gone yet, either.
The system has existed on the taxpayer. Now the taxpayer has voted to get rid of it.
People who keep parroting this take are the most hypocritical bunch I have ever seen. Because if the premise is true then when these institutions existed then those were also voted by taxpayers to exist, right? But that time these “taxpayers” made noise about how government can’t be trusted and majority is muzzling their right of speech and first amendment etc etc. Now they when they are in the majority they turn around and say stuff like majority rules, government can be trusted etc.
And I know people like to play both sides so let me add. The big government hoopla exists only on one side.
The taxpayer was lied to repeatedly and under the belief of many many many lies, unwittingly voted to get rid of it.
well the republican party has been talking for decades about removing EPA, DOE, etc. and has gotten lots of votes on those premises, so "they" make good on that promise and now the "voter has been lied to"? you could have made the same claim if the republicabs did nothing.
The lie is that getting rid of these agencies is a good thing.
Democracy is good until the public votes for something unpalatable. In that case they were lied to and/or they are unfit to choose for themselves.
We can actually show that the American public are lied to, and continue to be lied to.
Yes - I can get the point you are making - “democracy for me but not for thee” is BS. Sure!
But the evidence is that theres one media network which is simply selling whatever story works, along side a 50+ year effort to kill trust in institutions. We can even show that the republican machinery gave up on bipartisanship - hell, it’s even public knowledge.
But that wouldn’t make a whit of a difference to voting patterns, or your point. Because your point doesn’t need to be based in the long history of complicated malfeasance that rots all English speaking democracies. It’s anchored in your current state and argument.
So yeah, people voted.
> unpalatable
See, this is a weasel word. Nobody said it was unpalatable, they said it was bad, because it is.
Do you want bad things to happen? No? Okay then, everyone should be on the same page.
Are you saying they weren't lied to? Like Trump saying he knew nothing about Project 2025 which was a lie.
A lot of comments are rightfully pointing out the destructive nature of this move. But looking at it from another angle, is it possible this is a symptom of a deeper problem?
What if a significant portion of the electorate no longer believes institutions like the EPA are neutral arbiters of science, but instead see them as political actors pushing an agenda? If that belief is widespread, is an action like this seen not as 'destruction', but as 'dismantling a biased system', even if it seems counterproductive to the rest of us?
> What if a significant portion of the electorate no longer believes institutions like the EPA are neutral arbiters of science, but instead see them as political actors pushing an agenda?
This is clearly the case. The next question is, how did this happen? Did these people come to this conclusion based on their own diligent research, or were they led to this opinion by supremely funded vested interests that influence every branch of our society?
Unfortunately you’re right, this is more about beliefs.
A significant portion of the electorate believes that the government is hiding aliens, or that the political leadership are all secretly lizard people (whether this is meant literally or as a metaphor for Jews or whether they think Jews are secretly lizard people depends on the person). There are vast and necessary government functions that most of the electorate doesn't understand or doesn't value or completely misunderstands.
Even on hacker news I frequently see people completely misunderstanding how, for instance, scientific research gets funded in the US. And the readership of this site is far more likely than a random sample of Americans to know about scientific research.
Dismantling chunks of the government based on the ignorance of some portion of the electorate is just bad policy.
Do we have real proof that a sizeable portion of Americans believe in the secret lizard people thing? Best I could find:
https://www.publicpolicypolling.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/...
"Do you believe that shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate our societies, or not?"
11% said yes or were unsure.
That's from 2013, so I can't even begin to imagine what a poll from today would look like.
> What if a significant portion of the electorate no longer believes institutions like the EPA are neutral arbiters of science, but instead see them as political actors pushing an agenda?
They do, but it’s not a belief they came upon accidentally. It was pushed over decades using billions of dollars and multiple media conglomerates.
I think the original sin of this political era is the Citizen United ruling that money is free speech and corporations are persons.
can we imagine no other ways besides the EPA to take care of the environment? if we can't, then it was always a precarious situation.
One of the most onerous regulation regimes in the USA comes from the FAA.
When people question these regulations, and the cost of certifying aircraft and aircraft parts, someone always rightly responds "these regulations are written in blood."
The same can easily be said about environmental regulations, except in their case, the pool of blood is orders of magnitude deeper.
Do people really think that President Richard Nixon created the EPA to stick it to big business?
https://archive.fo/xva9m
Step 1: Point at immigrants/trans/blacks/etc
Step 2: Cut taxes on the rich. <---------- You are here
It works every time. Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson said: “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
Let’s see how the rural poor feel when their hospital closes, they can’t get medicaid, health insurance is wildly out of reach, they have no ability to borrow money thanks to insane medical debt that they can never repay, and their wages are garnished for student debt from a degree they never finished. How long until debt becomes a crime?
We’re gonna recreate serfdom in the USA.
> Let’s see how the rural poor feel when their hospital closes, they can’t get medicaid [...]
There's been research on that [1]. They become even more likely to vote Republican. Here's the abstract:
> Who do citizens hold responsible for outcomes and experiences? Hundreds of rural hospitals have closed or significantly reduced their capacity since just 2010, leaving much of the rural U.S. without access to emergency health care. I use data on rural hospital closures from 2008 to 2020 to explore where and why hospital closures occurred as well as who–if anyone–rural voters held responsible for local closures. Despite closures being over twice as likely to occur in the Republican-controlled states that did not expand Medicaid, closures were associated with reduced support for federal Democrats and the Affordable Care Act following local closures. I show that rural voters who lost hospitals were roughly 5–10 percentage points more likely to vote Republican in subsequent presidential elections. If anything state Republicans seemed to benefit in rural areas from rejecting Medicaid and resulting rural health woes following the passage of the ACA. These results have important implications for population health and political accountability in the U.S.
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-024-10000-8
The trend you described has been going on since Reagan, and the "rural poor" haven't budged. I have no expectation that attitudes will change in Rural America, not matter how bad things get.
Way longer than that if you want to get technical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_conquer
In a nutshell that's why the South is so poor. They've been falling for this for generations.
See step one. The hospitals closed and Medicaid had to be gutted because of illegal immigrants. Nothing to be done about it now.
These are the reasons many voted for Trump. His ability to tear down American institutions is a direct result of the apathy born out of decades of successful corporate corruption, or lobbying, if you prefer, that we failed to stop democratically.
But it is wrong to think all American generations before ours didn't have to fight. The lie is that democracy was ever easy. There are millions of Americans mobilizing, sharing their stories, marching, talking to their representatives, protesting, and following their conscience. It is easier than ever to find and join the peaceful opposition.
That's the process.
Most annoying part will be the time delay so people will forget exactly who caused all this damage in the first place too.
Well, that leads to another narrative trick called “see these are examples of how big government doesn’t work and the other side asking for increased government and hospitals are socialist and going to waste your tax dollars or give to freeloaders like immigrants etc”. Destroy government based support, blame it as failure of government, rinse and repeat.
How stupid
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It’s because he only knows how to destroy, not build, and destroying is always easier than building. It may be impactful but it is going to set America back decades.
Reminds me of reading about Karl Marx in college. As I recall he basically made a name for himself talking shit about capitalism. Then, people said, "Bro, if capitalism sucks so much, why don't you come up with something better?" And that's how The Communist Manifesto was born, which was a total disaster, and set humanity back generations.
Talking shit and tearing stuff down is easy. Building something is hard.
>Bro, if capitalism sucks so much, why don't you come up with something better?
That totally happened.
The irony of you saying that about a real estate mogul.
He's destroying for various reasons yes. But he knows how to build. Perhaps not personally, but he can wrangle a system to do things for him, mostly for him perhaps. OK completely for himself, but that's not to say he can't.
The only thing he has ever directed that has been a net positive to society, Operation Warp Speed, is something he disowns because of the rabid anti-science stance of his base.
The book Why Nothing Works is worth a read.
There’s not a lot the opposition can do. Elections have consequences and now people are gonna have to live with it. People stayed home or decided to vote against their own interest. It’s not like there wasn’t a previous track record to compare. Selective amnesia is not an excuse.
the democrats need to clear out their decrepit leadership or its just gonna continue to slide worse and worse
[0] https://www.newsweek.com/congressional-democrats-favorabilit...
[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/3846305-democrats-have-a-messag...
I don’t disagree. But nobody should be surprised by everything that’s happening right now. Most people justified their vote by saying he’s either joking or it won’t happen to me or my loved ones and are getting buyers remorse now. There were two options and one was much worse than the other.
Frankly, the Democratic party epically and massively failed their constituency by first running a mummy and then attempting to run perhaps the most unlikable, unrelatable, disconnected candidate of my lifetime - that literally zero people voted for.
It's not the people's fault, it's the party's... the party thought everyone would just jump when told to do so.
Democrats deserve better.
Seventy million people voted for her.
In the primary? No... 70 million people were forced to vote for her in the general. That's why Democrats lost this election.
It's comments like yours that make it really seem like the Democrat Party hasn't learned a damn thing from this ordeal.
I voted for her, but I didn't do it because I *wanted* her.
I don’t think it was “for” her. Most votes against Trump.
How was Kamala Harris more disconnected than, say, Mitt Romney, a billionaire who said that half of voters believed they were victims and were mooching off the government?
Or for that matter, how is she less disconnected than Donald Trump, who bragged about being able to get away with sexually assaulting people because he's famous?
They are all disconnected. The problem with Harris was that she was nothing. No message, no charisma.
What would you expect a competent opposition to do?
Have any sort of policy position and not run on the "at least I'm not him" platform.
In an era where Republicans are dismantling the government do you know what Dems will run on? That's right, dismantling the government, but in a kinder gentler way (see Ezra Kline's abundance agenda).
Dems are anemic to running on popular positions. Raise the minimum wage, expand Medicare, restore the institutions Republicans are dismantling.
Both parties are serving the wealthy. That's what prevents Dems from serving the working class. They know not to advocate raising the minimum wage.
It's what has created the behavior where Dems try to win over right wing independents because that's a more donor friendly position and Republicans can purely pander to their based, because they're already donor friendly (you know, for example, Republicans will always act to the benefit of big oil).
For starters, anything.
Like? It's hard to do anything when the executive, legislative, and judicial branches are all controlled by the same party. Until midterms, there's not much that can be done at the federal level. States can oppose some issues, and some States are, but what exactly do you think the opposition can/should be doing that they aren't already?
Connecting with people, building a mass movement, organizing institutions that can funnel people and effort into building the world and election results they want. Taking risks by taking a stand on issues and saying those issues are the reason to vote for them (not to avoid having the other side win). Doing local politics to demonstrate competence and show that they care and are building things, then show off those things to the rest of the country and say “look, we can do this everywhere” or at least “look at what we can do on a small scale but our vision is bigger and it’s limited by the fact our vision needs to happen on a national scale and can’t be achieved fully at this small scale”. Lots of things.
IMHO, it's already too late for the midterms. In fact, it's probably too late for the 2028 presidential election, too. Democrats need to connect, and that connection isn't from showing up, out of nowhere, three months before an election and taking policy. The connection starts years before the election, by associating oneself to the things the voters also associate with. I think one of the most brilliant things Trump ever did was to get involved with WWE. That started the connection with Rural America. It was long before he ran for president, and it wasn't boring policy talk. It was, "Look at me! I'm your guy! I'm into wrestling, just like you!" Now, this is nothing new - Clinton played the sax on Arsenio Hall. But I think the Democrats are just terrible at it. And here's a great example: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMIuyMQRAq1
I have a solution, talk The Rock into running for the dems. Wrestling and fame taken care of in one fell swoop!
(1) Actually have a coordinated plan would be the starting point.
(2) If the left truly wanted to help the American people like they say they do they need the programs they enact to actually work. Say what you want about Trump but he is effective. But then again, all authoritarians are.
> Say what you want about Trump but he is effective. But then again, all authoritarians are.
What? No, they aren’t.
Currently there isn't much they can do, but they handed the election to a corrupt buffoon. Inaction the border & immigration, letting the woke crowd run rampant with their nonsense(not talking about it doesn't make it go away), and selecting a VP that if ever tasked with running for President--wasn't likely to win.
American voters always look to the Dems and Republicans as if it’s a symmetric game.
So, one party puts up a person who encouraged and insurrection, has no coherent policy, ZERO moral standing, had security documents in a toilet, ran a crypto pump and dump scheme on the day of his inauguration, and wins.
But ALL of those things are not meaningful.
If one team comes to play football, and the other team brings in a posse of clowns who don’t play football, and the clowns win - then the game you are playing isn’t football. Hell, both teams should have fielded equally outrageous clowns. (This is what happens in completely corrupt nations, and America’s likely fate)
Playing a better game of football, is not as important as figuring out how the other team’s moves are legal.
In all earnestness - The question people really need to ask is not how the Dems lost, it’s how Trump ran in the first place.
> Inaction the border
Biden had an identical border policy to Trump term 1. Dems even tried to strengthen ice towards the end of Biden's term.
The fact that you think he was weak on the border really shows that Dems trying to out Republican Republicans on the border is a bad move. They should have been pushing for immigration reform and better/faster routes to becoming documented.
> letting the woke crowd run rampant with their nonsense
What does this mean?
> selecting a VP that if ever tasked with running for President--wasn't likely to win.
That's pretty typical. The much bigger problem is Biden ran while knowing his polling was in the gutter. It was him running with sundowning symptoms.
Harris's problem was that while knowing about Biden's unpopularity, she refused to distance our distinguish herself from him in any way.
Be better (like doing it at all) of saying what they have accomplished. People don't know what they zone know. Make a list of things accomplished and say it out loud. Humility could be another way that democracy dies.
Select a candidate that would not lose to Trump.
To be fair, it's hard for the Dems to do anything effectively when a sitting president attempts to overthrow an election, fails, and then half of the voters think "You know what, I want that guy to lead our country again."
Not that they're blameless, of course - they had four years to throw Trump in prison, did nothing, and now we're reaping the result. But the problem goes much deeper than the Dems being incompetent. In a functioning democracy, voters aren't supposed to elect someone who literally committed treason, just because the alternative is "unlikeable" (what the fuck does that even mean, next to Trump).
All they needed to do was have a primary, but they didn't
That's a pretty stupid benchmark. A president who just nukes Chicago would also be "impactful".
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This is such a simple trick. Politicize something, then call it politicized, and move along with a shrug.
I assume that mathematics will become "politicized" very soon.
Please note that this is not an attack on the parent, just an observation of what appears to be happening all around us.