House Democratic lawmakers reportedly used a closed-door meeting earlier this week to vent their frustrations with progressive advocacy groups that have been driving constituent calls and pressuring the party to act like a genuine opposition force in the face of the Trump administration's authoritarian assault on federal agencies and key programs.

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[–] 262 points 2 years ago (36 children)

"Forcing recorded votes is possible. Frequent quorum calls are possible. A wide variety of dilatory motions are possible. In short, harassing the majority is possible. If they think it's a bad idea, say so. If they say it's not possible, they're lying."

I like how politicians voting is considered a time out. It's their job, jfc.

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  • [–] 131 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    "But if our votes are recorded, our voters corporate donors will know we voted against them!"

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    [–] 189 points 2 years ago (7 children)
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    [–] 141 points 2 years ago (17 children)

    Progressives need to start their own party. The establishment DNC is so entrenched with big donors and lobbyists that it is unable to serve the people. Their balancing act of appeasing both the right and the left is just serving to alienate everyone because the final policies get so diluted. They have become too stuck in the quagmire of their own doing. I don’t see the DNC being able to change any time soon and through their inaction, will only enable more devastation of the country.

    The new Progressive party should align with the DNC as the opposition during this administration but simultaneously run more like minded candidates in the next elections with their own separate fundraising campaigns. That’s the only hope I have for meaningful change to happen.

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  • [–] 27 points 2 years ago (11 children)

    The problem is you get the NDP/Liberal vs. Conservative effect when you do this. If you have 30% of the population vote for your Leftie, and 30% vote for the other Leftie, in a given congressional district, the Republican can win with 31%, despite 60% voting against the Republican. We need RCV before we can do this, and people need to understand that they MUST put the other party as choice 2 or we are back to ending up with a Republican.

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    [–] 136 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

    The US needs a left-wing Party.

    This has been half a century of Fascists vs neoliberals, center-right "free to be LGBTQ as you die of poverty in the gutter" vs so far right we're building Concentration camps.

    Unfortunately our people have been poorly educated by design as well as brainwashed into believing profit comes before humanity. " Herp derp Anything less is socialism and therefore evil!"

    This is only "freedom" for the rich to trample the poor. Freedom without social responsibility is a rampage. We need revolution, revolution that does far more to Wall Street than merely occupy it , or we need to accept living in hell until the capitalists destroy the climate enough to destroy civilization all together.

    Don't worry, just a few more decades of the same at most for nature to do what we're failing to. This will end within a human lifespan, the choice is if it will be with or without a habitable planet for Humans.

    This isnt the usual ebbs and flows of history, There is a very literal deadline of humanity's own greedy making.

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    [–] 87 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Yeah I have completely lost faith in the Democratic Party. Seems like they don’t mind Trump because he benefits their wallet.

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    [–] 87 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    So the Republicans can act like an opposition party but they can't? Have they had their heads buried since the beginning of Obama's term? Or is this their snide way of confirming complicity?

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    [–] 85 points 2 years ago*

    Democrats are officially a dead party.

    "Disgraceful and humiliating surrender from these Democrats as they continue to hit your inboxes and messages begging (spamming) for money."

    That's all the careers care about.

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  • [–] 77 points 2 years ago (2 children)


    If only the fought as hard as they spam & grift

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  • [–] 39 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It really pisses me off that the ONLY outreach I saw were requests for money. Hundreds of them (many may have been scams, not sure).

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    [–] 65 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The headline almost reads like an Onion article.

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  • [–] 58 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Better get fucking used to it bluedogs.

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  • [–] 53 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    Luckily, if the world survives Trump the Democrats won't matter anymore because America won't matter. The rest of the world was pretty pissed off at the USA before, but still allowed America to keep its leverage because challenging it would be too much effort. Trump, however, is actively destroying that leverage through his trade wars and his cancelling of foreign aid at the same time that he's stripping his own government of its ability to function through his purges.

    The only pillar of American influence that Trump isn't destroying directly is the country's media exports, and they were already in the process of collapsing before Trump was re-elected.

    You got your high position in the world in the first place due to the fact that you were the only major power left standing after the world wars. Those circumstances won't happen again (well, world wars might, but not ones that leave the USA unscathed.)

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    [–] 48 points 2 years ago

    Or... Just act at all....

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  • [–] 45 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The party is functionally dead. If they don’t come out with absolute opposition we will be stuck with a single party for the rest of our lives.

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    [–] 44 points 2 years ago

    When they win elections, they refuse to use power to help people, but instead blame Repub obstruction. When they lose they wag fingers, but mostly just go along with Repubs (ie, confirmations) and they FUNDRAISE. Then they use that funding to defeat left dems in primaries.

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  • [–] 43 points 2 years ago (8 children)
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    [–] 42 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    Any of the ones who are upset about Progressives pushing them to act like an opposition party needs to be primaried and kicked out, if they can't be convinced. We need more primary challengers to actually change the party, like the republicans have and continue to do.

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    [–] 41 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Now I'm not saying that the Republican Party is a blatantly fascistic organization designed to re-concentrate all wealth and power into the hands of an aging white billionaire elite afraid of losing their power and want to "scorch the Earth" in revenge for the fact that they and their very specific view of "how things should be" can not last forever

    And that the Democrats are not only complacent, but are actively in on the plan and intentionally aiding this grift by pretending to be an alternative choice of leadership that seeks to prevent this from happening, and doing the bare minimum to keep up that illusion to prevent real opposition from showing up.

    Part of that plan is to get people to join up with the Democratic Party to resist the Republicans and steer them away from or at least discourage them from doing anything that would actually stop the Great Ominous Plan....

    The reason this is so effective is because due to the way America's Electoral System is, anything outside of the R's or D's is entirely unelectable no matter how many people vote.

    Though this also means that if the Democrats ever lost control of their party to people who actually want to do something, it would threaten to destroy the Republican Party, and prevent anything like it from rearing its ugly head again. As it would become as demonized as the Nazi Party is in Germany.

    But let's just say that that was exactly the case....

    What would the D's and R's be doing differently?

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    [–] 37 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    So they are silently just watching when Murica burns to the ground.

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    [–] 36 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Constituent pressure? How frustrating!

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    [–] 35 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    “There are a lot of good billionaires out there that have been with Democrats, who share our values, and we will take their money. But we’re not taking money from those bad billionaires.” - New DNC head

    It's a good thing we can all agree on what the definition of good and bad is, and how its applied in our society right?

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    [–] 34 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Majority of dems are literally just there for a pay check, and now they have to work for it?! Oh no.. Anyway..

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    I'm telling you. The DNC is a sunk cost. You'll keep contributing to it thinking is valuable but when it's time to cash in they've already cashed out. At least the RNC spends it's political capital, mostly on shitty culture war shit, but they don't let it disintegrate into nothing.

    If I could teach the DNC two words to use against the opposition it would be, "so what?" I mean, they use it on their constitutes all the time so it should be nothing new.

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  • [–] 34 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    a closed-door meeting earlier this week to vent their frustrations with progressive advocacy groups

    This tracks.

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    [–] 33 points 2 years ago (11 children)

    If they're so pissed about it, the progressives should just pack up and form a new party or join the WFP

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  • [–] 28 points 2 years ago (27 children)

    Yeah it's a clever lie that's perpetuated that says progressives have no where to go if they try to break from the Democrats. But secretly a more progressive platform would actually draw over a lot of disaffected libertarians and lite conservatives who only vote conservative because they've been convinced that they should only vote in opposition to Democrats instead of in favor of anything.

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    [–] 33 points 2 years ago* (4 children)

    I am only donating to AOC until she and her fellow progressives gain a larger voice in the direction of the party. I've unsubbed from a lot of Democratic lists, too.

    I advise all to do the same (as she can allocate these money to elsewhere if she wishes), while also contacting the DNC at https://democrats.org/

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    [–] 32 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    The party leadership needs to step down.

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    [–] 30 points 2 years ago (13 children)

    Can we all collectively elect AOC to represent all elected democrats in the House? She'd get, like, 215 votes on every bill.

    I know a person can hold only one position at a time; it was just a funny thought.

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    [–] 30 points 2 years ago

    If certain Dems aren't going to do anything constructive, then they need to get out of the damn way and put people like AOC in charge.

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  • [–] 29 points 2 years ago (2 children)
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    [–] 28 points 2 years ago

    Can Chuck Schumer go jump down a well please? Fuck the DNC's "centrist" republicrat agenda. Return to progressivism you archaic troglodytes.

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  • [–] 28 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Let me fix your headline "Sitting incumbents too comfortable to do their jobs annoyed that they are being pushed to do their jobs."

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