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You've got a pair of parties, one of which refuses to do anything particularly popular while they're in office because that wouldn't be bipartisan and another of which only does the most vulgar populist shit imaginable as soon as they get the reins. Who are voters supposed to support?
Give me one reason why Democrats couldn't pass DC Statehood. They had three big golden opportunities - in '93 and '09 and '21 - to pick up a full sized state complete with 2 Senators and 6 House Reps that would be the most reliably Dem state in the union from now until the next major party alignment, and they refused to do it every fucking time.
There is no downside to DC statehood for Democrats.
This is just the tip of the iceberg on "Things Democrats could easily do if they actually wanted to". But we consistently see legislators, executives, and party leaders alike drag their feet and pass out unpopular compromises, rather than pushing through reforms that are both wildly popular and obviously beneficial to their partisan interests.
This isn't a voter problem. It is entirely a problem within the party leadership - much of which is totally opaque and intractable to the voting public.
Exactly this, and I'm sick of getting blamed for their incompetence.
How exactly do you think laws get passed? It's not like Democrats in the house can just vote harder and overcome the Republican majority.
They need either 60 votes in the Senate, which they don't have, or 50 votes in the Senate to get rid of the filibuster, which they don't have.
Fact of the matter is they don't have the votes. I suspect you'll call it controlled opposition and "there'll always be someone because Democrats don't actually want it", but that's baseless theory. Especially since the last time Dems did have those votes, for a scant 2 months, they put together Obamacare. It even had single payer, but the 60th vote they needed refused to support it unless they took it out.
You could get 49 ideal leftist socialists elected, but as long as there's 1 detractor, the party can't do anything. And it's silly idealism to think that some mean words will make that single detractor come to your side.
This right here.
At this point, I think that people asking "Why didn't Democrats do X and Y" posts are sea-lioning, and not asking in good faith. "I'm just asking questions!"
And Joe Fucking Yacht-boy Manchin was the best we will ever get from West Virginia - maybe for the rest of our lifetimes.
Democrats can get rid of that number at the start of any Congressional session. They have deliberately chosen not to do so, because they cling to the idea of bipartisan reforms passing through the upper chamber.
You offer the detractor the carrot or the stick. Very easy to wipe the vote of a Senator when the next Defense Authorization bill is up for a vote and everyone is talking about which bases to close.
Bush did not need 60 votes. Trump did not need 60 votes. Reagan sure as hell did not need 60 votes.
Democrats are lying to themselves if they think 60 is a magic number. They're lying even harder if they think 49 Socialist Party Senators would not be able to whip support for their policies, given how ably the GOP has skated by with a meager 40.
Do you have any examples of a carrot or stick actually convincing a politician to change their mind? If that worked, you could just shame Republicans into getting 100-0 votes for everything.
This is what's ridiculous to me. You're cynical and conspiratorial that there will always be controlled opposition, but you also think a bully pulpit and the right words will convince that opposition to support you.
The Civil Rights Act was a big one.
Could you elaborate? I'm genuinely interested in knowing more.
I mean, I don't want to be snide but... there's an ample backlog of historical material that gets into the details. Just pick up a book. Nick Kotz's "Judgement Days" offers a deep dive. Chapter 17 of Howard Zinn's "People's HIstory" gives you the abbreviated version. There are plenty of others.
From Johnson's acerbic legislative style to the economic leverage applied by MLK's boycotts and the militant organizing of Malcolm X's radicals, historically intractable politicians were swayed with both the carrot of an enormous new activist constituency and the stick of strikes, shut-downs, and the President literally grabbing and twisting your ballsack because you failed to deliver him the votes.