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Between “Democrats say ‘Vote’” and “Democrats do nothing to fight back,” they didn’t vote in 2016.
This Supreme Court is a result of that inaction.
Congratulations on demonstrating how voter abstention hands the government to Republicans.
Let’s not do that any more.
We had 8 good years before that and didn't set up any protections.
During the last year of that, Obama was denied the ability to nominate a Supreme Court Justice on an Election Year. Then, Trump got 2 nominees appointed to the SCOTUS, one of which was on an election year.
You had the first 2 years of Obama. Obama's thanks for the ACA was voters not showing up and losing the house of representatives for year 3 and 4. And again for year 5 and 6. And then both the house and Senate in years 7 and 8. So no you didn't have 8 years with Obama, you had 2 years with Obama because voters did not show up. Congress is what passes laws and has power. They even shut down the freaking government under Obama.
With a heavily divided legislature that only just passed the ACA before it exploded.
Only Congress can increase the number of Justices on the Supreme Court. We had two years of congressional majority in the last twenty. They focused on healthcare.
How could they have possibly predicted that they’d need to expand and pack the Supreme Court to prevent the next President from becoming a dictator?
They focused on healthcare.
And they gave us Romneycare
And even that was a monumental task. One vote away in the Senate, and that one guy got rid of the single payer option for the cost of his vote. Joe Lieberman if you want to look him up, the guy who started no labels political party (without a platform).
More people (as a percentage of the eligible voting population) voted in 2016 than 2012, and more in 2020 than in 2016.
Finger wagging at people for criticizing the current ruling party (which is sending weapons to a country that is using them to commit genocide) instead of recognizing that we live in an undemocratic system is taking it out on the wrong people. Clinton literally won more votes in the election you're saying people didn't vote hard enough in. It's spitting in the face of everyone whose votes were shat on by the Electoral College to turn around and blame the people who were disenfranchised.
quick reminder: Democrats have had control of house, senate, white house exactly 4 months of the last 44 years. There's been little opportunity for the 'fight back' part where they fight for democracy when most of their time is undoing the absolute worst of the fascists' hate-ball of regulations. THAT's the exhausting part.
For how long has this trifecta been under fascist control? Because it seems like fascists act with impunity and unlimited power as soon as they control one institution.
Because they don't care about the rules, but they know the other side does. Whenever they act, they defend not their actions, but the process by which they were allowed to do them. If fascists break the rules, liberals can only request that the rules be followed. If they follow the rules, put on a tie and speak like an academic, liberals can only trust that their ideas will be voted against. In either case, they don't know how to call a fascist a fascist, and they don't know how to fight fascism within the current ruleset, and they never will.
There’s also the fact that even when they have absolute control by the numbers, reality doesn’t really reflect that; The democrat party is not united, and is full of politicians who will refuse to follow the party line unless the party bends over backwards for them.
“Oh, you want me to vote to stop fascism? Sure, I’ll be happy to do that, as long as you add funding for a brand new bridge in my home state.” Repeat ad nauseam until you have a horribly bloated bill that nobody actually wants to vote for.
In a potential future where Democrats own 100% of the senate, and nobody sane is voting GOP, it’s also possible for third party candidates to make progress in elections since no one has fear of a batshit lunatic getting into office.
It is fairly rare for either party to control Congress and the executive for long, so I'm not sure if that's exactly the main pitfall we've run into.
I think this is mostly an unforced error on the part of neoliberalism, specifically 3rd way political ideology. In the 80s and 90s 3rd way politics grew as an idea to work around congressional gridlock.
Basically, the democratic party figured they would work across the aisle with moderate Republicans on policy they could both agree on. Hoping that this would show the American population that they were the party that could get things done.
This worked in part, Bill Clinton the main architect of American 3rd way movement became very popular. However, it had two repercussions that we are still dealing with today. It gave the policy initiative to the Republican party, allowing them to be the directors of this across aisle cooperation. It also drastically shifted the democratic party to the right.
If the DNC is rating Congress members based on criteria of Third way ideology, then the members most willing to cooperate with moderate Republicans are going to fill leadership positions. Which is why the DNC leadership is currently full of center right senior citizens conditioned to bending backwards to the whims of Republican economic policy.
maybe because neoliberalism is not the right tool to fight back against fascism
To my American friends: Please don't give up hope yet! As the GOP is very closely communicating with Fidesz, they're banking on activist burnout. They want to break you, so you not only won't do anymore activism, but to maybe even join them finally in the hopes of getting something from them finally. After the next Trump victory, they'll likely also copy one another thing from Hungary, namely the firing of leftists, to force them to convert to conservatism.
I'm actually tired of being blackmailed with fascism.
In my country we had maybe five elections in a row where the premise was "it is us or fascism". And yes, fascism is there but... COULD YOU ACTUALLY MAKE THINGS GOOD AND WORK FOR IMPROVING YOUR PEOPLE LIVES!!? I don't want my choice to be die shot down or slowly being impoverished until life is no longer any good. I want to actually have a good life, and enabling "just not fascism (tm)" is not doing it.
Ok, let's point out how poorly timed this meme is.
The election isn't until November. It's July.
We did vote, and we can't vote for any state or district that we are not in. Democrats won 2020, and avoided total disaster in 2022.
Americans cannot and never have had the ability to vote in SCOTUS.
The last chance the Democrats had at preventing this shit show was under Obamas first term when he could have briefly stacked the courts.
Americans did have the ability to vote in SCOTUS. it's called the general election. and they did in 2016, except democratic voters didn't feel like it. so now you get 6-3 decisions that are dismantling the whole country.
Yeah, the FBI director got ahold of Anthony Wiener's laptop because he's a fucking awful dirtbag, and at some point his wife had logged into her work email, so IDENTICAL information from The State Department was on it, so FBI big brain decides to make a big ol press conference to reopen the case against Hillary Clinton days before the election just in case maybe there was more than just duplicate information. Except, he already knew it was all duplicate information. Everyone with a brain new it was all duplicate information.
What a brilliant guy. He deserves a lot more blame than he's ever gotten.
"It's soooo exhausting to vote one day every two years, so might as well allow as many republicans as possible to become firmly entrenched in every level of government, able to sabotage any attempt to push the inertia in any other direction."
Here's a novel idea: you are not just electing one charismatic godking messiah with a magic political wand to the executive office every four years, but an entire system of appointees and employees.
Then there's Congress, and the Supreme Court, and state governors and state congresses, city mayors and city council, school board, etc.
One side strives for reason and science, the other is scorched earth anti-science anti-reason ignorant hysteria. And you keep giving them enough power to thwart everything.
Tune out and stop watching the infotainment bullshit designed to keep us outraged and polarized every minute of the goddamned day, just show up at the polls each first Tuesday in November and vote Democrat. Once every two years is enough.
At this point, you have enough information to do this with great confidence that it is the correct and sane choice.
Let's get our collective heads out of the Middle Ages peasant mindset.
And yet, somehow the DNC is completely powerless while we are watching all of our human rights get washed down the drain and simultaneously watching it become legal to bribe judges.
This is horseshit and the DNC is complicit.
Once every two years is enough.
No. In a democracy, it should not be "enough" to partake in elections once every two years.
Let's get our collective heads out of the Middle Ages peasant mindset.
At least the peasants rebelled every once in a while when the lords fucked them over too much.
its as if someone is voting facists in or maybe just not voting to keep them out. wierd.
Not pictured:
Not voting causes fascism to happen faster.
Tankies betraying Anarchists instead of fighting fascism.
"Tankies" are largely accelerationists of a few flavors unified by one desire: watch the United States burn to the ground. You shouldn't take their viewpoint seriously except as adversaries.
Democrats say "vote!" -> not enough people actually vote
Actually, the recent record turnouts should really be getting you to pay attention to how the elections are structured. It turns out, the way districts and the electoral college are organized means that where you get out the vote matters. Telling people to vote harder doesn't make those systemic obstacles go away.
Why would liberals lift a finger against the very people that will protect their precious status quo for them?
Two days old and the memes already aging well as Bidens campaign says they don't want to reform the Supreme Court.
Voting will not solve our problems, but it can buy us time allowing us to work to change things outside electoral politics.
The consequences was losing the election in 2020, no? I mean Democrats are really, really, really bad at fighting back. Like bringing pool noodles to a gun fight bad. But saying they do nothing is a bit much.
"They go low, we go high", has absolutely rotted Dem brains. Going low has worked pretty fucking well.
Voting is doing something. The problem is when the people you vote for undermine some of the reasons you voted for them.
The problem is that Dems have had control of all 3 (presidency, house of reps, and Senate) for only 4 years of the last 24 years. When you don't have all 3 you are forced to reach across the aisle.
*If you include Bill Clinton then it's 6 years of the last 32 years. If you include Bush senior and Reagan, then it's 6 years of the last 44 fucking years.
