I guess it depends on what you consider modern history, but W was definitely worse than Biden. Biden was not good, but under W we got the patriot act, Abu Ghraib, disastrous increase in racism and xenophobia, no child left behind. The guy was incapable of even accidentally doing the right thing.

If you don’t count W then there’s only 3 presidents in modern history, so taking 2nd isn’t that bad.

You mean normal people don’t describe their partners as sexual matadors?

What does that even imply? That he waves it around until she gets mad and attempts to attack him? That he flees from her in the bedroom? That he has an entourage of assistants to help him prepare and step in during?

Also, lmao:

The podcast has earned a 1.8-star rating on Spotify and a 2.5-star rating on Apple Podcasts.

Basically half of all senate Dems supported this. Even if they’re not getting reelected, they should be following the desires of their party. The party is the issue it seems. Jefferies said he didn’t support it. Schumer said he did. I don’t know that the above comment was blaming the newly elected people as much as expressing frustration that the voters (presumably people that these senators currently represent) have spoken just recently, but apparently that has no bearing on the direction the party takes. Hopefully the newly elected individuals do a better job of representing the will of the people, regardless of their adherence to the party line. Schumer is just continuing to demonstrate he’s not the man for the moment and isn’t in touch with the needs and wants of the people sending Dems to congress.

I think you are taking an outcome and confusing it with a value. I notably don’t like right wingers, but even I don’t think they love to hate. I think left and right leaning people have different deeply held values and seeing someone who appears to not care about those values stand in your way of achieving them can be very upsetting.

I value community and having right wingers openly say that if a child’s family cannot feed them that’s not their problem upsets me. I’m sure right wingers value autonomy and personal responsibility and a lot of other things that make my insistence on child food programs upsetting to them. Neither side wants to hate inherently, they just want opposing things and the other side is literally stopping them.

Eh, I don’t know if that was a nice thing about her. I prefer my fascists out and proud. Posting online about how they’re planning on breaking the law or giving speeches where they say their exact plans. Makes it easier to prosecute them when the time comes. Not that she doesn’t also deserve it, but it’s not quite the same if she’s not publicly lying about being a lawyer or openly admitting to war crimes and the like. We must shine a light on evil and it really helps when they are the ones stepping into the spotlight.

Though I understand the underlying sentiment, and I recognize that politics isn’t a once every two years thing, I disagree that it should somehow be on us on.

I would love an engaged electorate, but realistically people campaigned on a specific platform. We pay them to read the bills and ideally vote in accordance with what they said their values are. It’s completely unrealistic to push that back on the constituents. Often even congresspeople don’t have time to read an entire bill before they vote on it. Do I understand all the intricacies of every omnibus bill? No. I give them my hard earned money so they have the time and staff to. If I have to be on the phone all the time reminding them that they promised no more wars just so they remember to stop Trump from bombing Iran then they have failed to do their job.

Does that mean we shouldn’t call and express our opinions? No, of course not. But the entire point of having representatives in a representative democracy is so that your average person doesn’t have to sit down and understand the ins and outs of every policy. It’s really not their job to, and especially in America it’s unrealistic to act like people will. Party leadership should be the ones capable of looking around, seeing the direction the wind is blowing, and coming up with a unified vision that addresses the issues of the people that voted for the party.

Also, however much I support contacting your congressperson, and have done so often myself, I’ve never once had it have any affect whatsoever. I still do it, but that’s not a reliable way to get policies you want to happen. The only real reliable way is to vote in someone who was going to champion that anyway.

If they mess up coming out of this midterm win, I will be astounded if they are able to take the presidency. Dems will never have another chance like this to really demonstrate a new vision. I hope they don’t fumble it.

I really don’t think it’s a thrown under the bus thing. She maybe flung herself into oncoming traffic, but it’s not like this was done to her. The party was letting her get away with a lot to begin with, and she took it too far. How did she think it would go down endorsing a republican over a Democrat while Trump is in office. She forced their hand.

She was kicked out of the party by the head of the Michigan Dems. Schumer did publicly denounce her.

I’m not generally positively surprised by the party, but they handled this well.

Is she the one that her said her husband is voting republican because of this? Honestly she should be ostracized by anyone on the Dem side. Anyone willingly married to an R voter at this point cannot be trusted. Unbelievable that she ran and can’t seem to convince her husband to vote for her party if he’s not voting for her in the position. Clearly she cannot be trusted to push for her constituents needs if she can’t push her husband to vote blue. Maybe if her constituents were the state of Israel things would be different, but if she’s with someone that won’t vote for the candidate of her own party then clearly she doesn’t actually care what happens to them.

Honestly, probably a non zero amount, but I can assure you that the dem voters would actually care if it came out.

The Weiner scandal was actually a scandal and he served time. I’m not willing to go to bat for dem politicians (though I’d pick a random D over a random R politician any day), but I’ll definitely back dem voters on the whole for actually having some degree of standards or morals, which does generally lead to accountability.

I think that’s the main difference, because even if Rs and I disagreed, if they actually had morals we would not have found ourselves here. A bunch of Rs referred to Trump as a Hitler-like fascist and then bent the knee because the R voters didn’t care. It’s not that our politicians are somehow morally superior, though on the whole they definitely are, it’s that the actual base cares about the things they say they care about.

This is one of the more frustrating things. I’m talking to MAGA SA survivors and they act like Trump would never. As though he is not the exact type of person that would, has actively spoken about doing it, and has been convicted of that.

There is a level of delusion that I truly cannot understand. It is legitimately scary that they have been 1/3 of American society this whole time. Maybe not seamlessly blending in, but not these completely brainwashed fools. They weren’t suggesting the moon was made of cheese or anything. They had families, went to work, did their groceries, and they had this in them the whole time. Horrifying. It sounds stupid, but in earnest it’s frightening. Not to sound alarmist but I feel like I’m living in the rise of Nazi Germany part 2 and we’re watching people get loaded on the trains and they’re not even trying to hide it. I’m screaming at these people like “look! Look at the trains! It’s exactly like what’s in this history book that we all read and agreed on who the bad guy was!” And they’re standing there dumbfounded as if I’m the one who’s unwell and imagining things.

Sorry for the rant, but I feel like nothing has quite captured the horror of living amongst these people. It’s horror/psychological thriller movie type stuff. I really hope some media attempts to depict this era some day, because it really feels unbelievable. I feel like had I not personally lived through it I wouldn’t be able to understand it.

I’m generally in agreement with you, but I’m not sure how you see this as you having “to explain this stuff every 2 years”. You’re not providing new information to me or the people that disagree with vote blue no matter who. They understand how elections work. They just disagree with you. Sure, an Iowa representative may be more moderate, but it’s possible these voters are unwilling to concede this particular issue to moderate dems. They may believe that preventing dems from winning with anti trans candidates is worth another republican term. I’m not saying they’re right, but you’re not really arguing with that point as much as reiterating that right now there are only two options.

Also, regarding your suggestion that this is something that should be discussed in the primaries, the article does addresses that:

Up until this ad most of the anti-trans ads from the Democrats this cycle had been mostly focused on trans people in sports and a few about treatment for trans children. This one takes a big step past them in it’s attack on the trans community by stating opposition to “Taxpayer funds for sex changes.”

If a politician conceals the extent of their anti trans rhetoric until the general, there’s not much that could have been done. Additionally, even if they hadn’t, if trans people and their allies supported another dem and they lost the primary, all the sudden they are expected to be willing to accept an anti trans candidate. I can understand them being unwilling to support them and possibly next time it will be the other faction that ends up having to be willing to sacrifice their ideals in the primary they want a dem candidate to win the general.

I am not sure how strategic that is, but mainly because Dems don’t generally withhold their votes so there’s not much precedent to see how the party will react.

I might be incorrect, but I think they are trying to suggest that no election is a standalone choice where the only downstream effect is that one candidate wins over the other. Each election outcome effects the elections that come after it. If a moderate republican won last time they might try to run a more conservative one next time to test the waters. If a progressive dem lost the dems are likely to use that as a reason to not run a progressive next time.

They may be suggesting that voting for an anti trans dem now opens the door for more anti trans or anti-XYZ dems in the future. Do we want to get to a place where the Democratic Party is comfortable running anti choice candidates or anti public school candidates? Basically the idea is to signal to the party that they will not ever win with this message, even against fascists. Along the same line of thinking, but as a rebuttal to what I’m assuming is their conclusion, an R in office might change policies or do harm that a dem may not be able to reverse, regardless of if they win next or not.

I’m not suggesting people not vote for him, and I’m not suggesting vote blue no matter who, I’m just adding some context for how I interpreted the comment. I personally am a vote blue no matter who person so far. Maybe it makes me a coward, maybe it makes me pragmatic, maybe both. I do think I understand trans people withholding their vote if this is their candidate though. I won’t blame them for standing up for themselves, since the rest of us seem willing to throw them under the bus.

I keep bringing this up to people IRL too. I legitimately just do not understand how this is the case. Everyone says it’ll keep dropping, but it just hasn’t. It’s terrifying to know that 1/3 people in the US think like this. I know due to population distribution it’s not exactly like this, but imagine if every third person you interacted with in your daily life still supported this. 3 tellers at the bank? One of them is a rabid supporter of a rapist and felon, have fun! How do we even function as a country? There is something deeply wrong with these people and I don’t even know where to start. I have gone no contact with a few trumpers in the family and they weren’t good people to start with necessarily, but they were contributing members of society. The longer it went on the more angry and entrenched they became. I wonder if they started like this or there’s an element of digging in their heels that has made them unable to believe their lying eyes and ears.

I know this upsets us all, but I am just livid reading this. All for the lack of security chips? We won’t even make sure people can eat. How is this not a no brainer?

Can I ask where you moved to and I what avenue you used? I’ve been trying to leave but it’s been a hard sell to my family, especially because a lot of places I could reasonably go would require a different language.

Ice shouldn’t have guns. The US gives guns to so many government employees that absolutely do not need them. Unless you’re regularly expected to interface with people who are armed and dangerous, you should not have a gun.

I understand the sentiment, but they do not care about others and I assure you they wouldn’t mind getting their hands dirty. They are green with envy seeing ice murder people in the streets. So much of their gun toting macho man culture is just foaming at the mouth while talking about how ready they are to kill someone. I do not think they value human life at all and they undoubtedly lack the empathy that would make a normal person think twice about cutting open a human being just to murder another group of human beings.

I had OP tagged after the 3rd yadda post so I know to check the linked web address. You can probably report it if the website is particularly egregious, but I’m not sure how strict the mods are about that sort of thing.