this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024
77 points (77.3% liked)

politics

19075 readers
3841 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] krashmo -3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

If Biden wanted to tax the rich why didn't he try it when Dems controlled both chambers of Congress? I'm sure it's more likely to happen under Biden than Trump but from where I sit it doesn't seem likely to happen at all.

[–] MegaUltraChicken 19 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Because that Democratic "control" was razor thin and included people like Manchin/Sinema. We need an actual majority to pass anything without their cooperation. Even if Biden wanted 50s era tax levels on the top tax brackets (90%+), he simply doesn't have the votes in Congress. Last time they had anything resembling a workable majority was during the Obama administration, when they passed the ACA over several months. Even then they had to water it down because of Joe Lieberman. One more vote would've resulted in a public option. Luckily tax policy can be done in reconciliation so a simple majority works in the Senate. Or we can elect a few more Senators willing to nuke the fillibuster, it's pretty close now.

Point is, it's not just on Biden (or any POTUS). Congress (and internal Democratic party politics) are fucked. Yeah he could be doing more to get party members in line with his agenda, but they're pretty insulated at this point. We need to capture more seats in the general while ideally primarying every moderate member of the Democratic party we can. We have to be able to cancel our the 2-3 fuckers waiting to block shit, on top of the entire other party of y'all qaeda who blocks any attempt at progress.

Disclaimer: POTUS is now king supposedly so most of what I said could be accomplished with some strategic deportations of congressmembers and judges under official act by the border patrol or some shit.

[–] krashmo 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Convenient excuses. This has been the reasoning used to justify Dems doing nothing for decades. Show me the effort or don't talk about desire.

[–] MegaUltraChicken 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Not having the votes isn't a convenient excuse, it's reality. I literally just gave you major legislation passed by the Democrats the last time they had control of Congress and POTUS. You're not asking for effort, you're asking for them to pass stuff and that requires more votes.

There are plenty of great progressive policy proposals that are supported by large swaths of the Democratic Party. Healthcare, ubi, abortion rights, immigration reform, etc. If they had to votes to pass shit and didn't, you'd have a solid point. But they don't, and there's plenty of evidence that if they had the votes they would pass more legislation. Can you point to a time in the last 50 years when the Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority in congress w control of POTUS, and didn't pass any major legislation?

[–] krashmo 1 points 4 months ago

I don't take issue with your assertion that they don't have the votes based on the way they play the game but I don't agree that Manchin / Sinema / Lieberman are sufficient explanations for their lack of effort. There's always a convenient scapegoat for failing to do what they promised but at some point they have to own that failure instead of blaming it on a couple people.

Also, the ACA is not a major piece of legislation to anyone outside of Congress. It's a minor improvement over the completely unchecked shit show we had before but it is fundamentally no different than what we have always had. You're framing it like they were so close to offering a public option but my recollection of those events is that they cut that from the proposal almost immediately and with little to no negotiation. That's not fighting it's letting your opponent dictate terms. Same goes with any number of other strategies and pieces of legislation from the same period or Bidens first 2 years. Dems could have gotten rid of the filibuster and actually fought for progress but they decided not to. That was party leadership's decision, not Joe Manchin. People don't give a shit what Dems say they support because they won't even force a vote on most of it, much less actually implement it.

[–] takeda 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The two "Democrats" that were giving the control weren't really Democrats. They even changed their party. Manchin at least was not hiding who he was (he was always known as a moderate Republican), but Sinema totally cheated her voters and sold herself as soon as it was possible.

[–] Ensign_Crab 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The two “Democrats” that were giving the control weren’t really Democrats.

I've noticed that greater loyalty to the party is expected from the voters than from those they elect.

[–] UsernameHere 9 points 4 months ago

Manchin and Sinema