When Trump fear mongers about immigrant caravans he’s full of shit. And when the GOP suddenly notices the deficit after blowing it up by giving tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy, they are also full of shit and disingenuous. When Trump rails on the negative impact of NAFTA, that’s the truth. That’s what effective propaganda relies on–that there be some truth to it. Then keep repeating the truth parts along with the lie parts, until the audience believes that it is all truth.
I was listening to a Michael Parenti speech from the 80’s and he describes how people were discounting Reagan as some mindless dolt, while he was simultaneously adroitly advancing the interests of the ruling class. It was eerily reminiscent of how Trump is portrayed as an idiot. Yet, just like Reagan he delivers on tax cuts for the rich, pulling back workers’ rights and protections, appointing RW judges, and installing “civil servants” who’s goals were destruction of government and institutions. Trump may not be able to multiply 6x17 in his head, or speak as eloquently as Obama, but he doesn’t need to be able to do those things in order win battles in the class war.
In your opinion when did this historical corporate centrism Dem party transform into something else? Obama ramped up the police/surveillance state, let the banksters off the hook, did drone wars, etc. Obama’s a smart guy, he knows what the impact of NAFTA was and he was like “hold my beer, catch a load of this TPP”. That was just a few years ago. Biden is president and he participated in all the stuff I listed in my previous post except for Taft-Hartley. Schumer was around for most of it too.
When Dems say that they want to pass “very liberal” agendas I put that in the same category of “most progressive” stimulus ever. Like what does it actually mean? Very liberal…progressive…shit I bet Kyrsten Cinema is capable of describing herself as either one, and she voted against increasing the minimum wage.
Here’s a little breakdown that may help us understand each other better. From my view:
very progressive/liberal stimulus=temporary tax credits=bandaids, the system is still in place but there is some relief for those in need
giving employees 1/3rd representation on the board of companies=reformist=better than bandaids because at least we’ve partly changed the power dynamic of the employer/employee relationship
turning Amazon in to worker owned co-operative=radical/socialist=getting rid of the parasitic class and getting closer to the cure
Schumer is probably motivated somewhat by an AOC primary challenge but honestly he’s a massive favorite to fade that no matter what. He seems to genuinely get it now, I think Mitch shitting in his face for a decade actually changed him.
I think you could pick out points after Nov 4th u til after 6th Jan to see how Schumer changed his stance on the GOP & see’s them for what they are nowadays.
Whelp, I totally agree the Dems are shit but they have been making some progress and this bill is a good one none the less. The most questionable thing is that they took so long but hope they get these checks out ASAP. Its distributions in the correct direction so don’t be confused by the idealistic noise.
Re: things changing, people need to understand that ballot initiatives or maybe even laying down in the streets en masse are the only likely paths to break the stranglehold. The people being paid by big business to be politicians are never going to hang themselves.
clinton didn’t negotiate it. passing it was fairly bipartisan. pinning job elimination on clinton without mentioning that is misleading, even as clinton did a ton to alleviate the jobs transition.
software was already booming before mosaic and IE (lol WWW). it actually required a concerted growth mindset from business to generate demand for programmers and the government to “luckbox” into plenty of people trying to learn cobol/etc. by the time i was a cs undergrad, their numbers grew for a decade.
Manchin still might be on board for a talking filibuster, but ruled out requiring 41 Senators present to sustain a filibuster and said 60 votes was a hard line still. He also said explicitly that blocking the voting rights bill wouldn’t change his mind.
Sinema, Manchin, Feinstein, Tester, and King all supposedly not there on the nuclear option with some unnamed others also non commital.
Some of this may be a process, but it is going to be a slow one. Tester is working with a bipartisan group of 20 on the infrastructure bill and says he’s committed to that process and working through all available options and working to repeatedly pass bills before addressing the filibuster (although he isn’t taking it off the table)
I think passing anything with 50 votes still a huge dog (id put the voting rights bill as a +1000 dog) but at the very least this is going nowhere fast and most of ‘21 likely going to be needed to convince the laggards there is a problem.
Don’t listen to Joe Manchin talk. He’s a massive attention whore who is good at cultivating an image that works for him in WV. He’s not going to block the reform necessary to pass voting rights, though it might take a few very painful cycles of obstruction to get him there. I’m far more worried about dancing thumbs down lady, and even Feinstein’s corpse.
I hope you are right but I really don’t think we have any evidence manchin will support filibuster reform. I think if we want voting rights reform we either need sixty votes or to win more senate seats in 2022.
Isn’t it against manchins interests for the dems to win more seats? If they keeping winning he’s yesterday’s news. At 50/50 he’s super important and everyone has to cater to his moronic whims. seems like a perverse incentive situation to me.