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I’ve been screaming this since 2009.
Others have been screaming longer.
I’m pretty sure if the Democrats started playing the same game the Republicans are playing they’d dominate. They need to grow up, put on their big girl pants, and get back to governing instead of letting the republicans steal their lunch.
Democrats have already been playing this game. Illinois already only has 2 Republicans in the house, California uses a jungle primary that helps prevent Republicans from winning. New York has a lot of close districts already.
Beto O’Rourke: Governors in [blue] states all say some variation of “You better watch out what you do. If you do that, we’re going to strike back.” I would love, and I think the country would love, if Democrats got off the back foot and stopped reacting and responding with “If you do this, then I’m going to do that.” F— that. Take the offense—go after these guys. This is the game now. There are no refs; no fouls are going to be called. There’s no consequence or penalty for Trump redrawing the maps in Texas mid-decade. Stop pretending like there is. Stop waiting for them to do it when clearly, that’s what they’re going to do if we’re unsuccessful in this quorum break. We have an opportunity with Democratic governors to seize the initiative and not just wait to be hit and then to hit back, but start that redistricting process now, in California, in New York, and any state where Democrats control the governor’s mansion and the legislature. Quit f—ing around and waiting when you know exactly where this thing is going.
Yep
They want to focus on one battle at a time, because they don’t want to win the war. The Dems he’s complaining about take most of the same bribes as Republicans.
We passed the point of “hitting back” being enough decades ago.
Doesn’t matter if Texas pulls this off, every blue state needs to start proactively fighting back
Like Beto said, if so.eone doesn’t want to fight, they can get the fuck out of office. All they’re doing is stopping someone else from fighting.
because they don’t want to win the war.
[Citation needed]
The 2024 election, when the Democratic party decided that supporting a foreign Apartheid state was more important than winning an election, knowing they could just blame it on the voters.
I hate to break it to you, but support for Israel was stronger than opposition in both parties. Politicians aren’t stupid. There is no easy way to change this until the old guard, who carries water for Israel, dies off.
That’s not how it works. When the Democratic party takes a position, a lot Democratic loyalists tend to just sign on. It’s an exception when the politicians start following the voters on issues. A whole lot of voters were livid with the party for supporting Israel, while a whole lot more were sleepwalking in lockstep with the party line. Had the party soured on Israel, they could have had both groups.
That is an interesting opinion. You think they would have gained more polarized disengaged voters if they would have taken an anti-Israel stance. The polling suggested the opposite, that they would have lost more entrenched voters than they gained.
While I definitely have a soft spot for the Palestinians, I don’t really believe that many people care. I think it is naive to think so honestly. Especially with the rise of the far right youth, there were not the numbers you are thinking there were.
The polling suggested the opposite, that they would have lost more entrenched voters than they gained.
And yet, the Democratic voters seem to have turned on a dime in the last couple of months. Funny how that works. Support for Israel among Democratic voters has gone terminal. All they needed was permission.
The polling on so many things have been so wrong that i am so done pretending we can do math to predict human behavior like this.
The Democrats payed hundreds of millions to their extended family with extensive degrees to tell them exactpy how to campaign to win by the polling numbers and they drowned in their own bullshit.
Maybe we just try stuff now and aim for humanity and caring and plans to help people and see how that goes in the reap world.
It is never too late to change, but if history has shown us anything it is the US is the most violent, racist, and misogynist country. We have a long way to go, but that shouldn’t stop us from changing.
See: US Politics for the last 10-30 years.
See: 2016-2025 especially
Gerrymandering has been an obvious problem for decades. The only people that didn’t see a problem are those congress critters that got elected to one. (“Well, it worked to get me elected so it’s obviously not broken.”)
The shape of my very blue congressional district in a very blue state most closely resembles projectile vomit on a linoleum floor.
Democrats have had multiple opportunities to fix this shit over the decades, and instead they’ve just been using it to their advantage wherever possible. The Fair Representation Act has been our best opportunity to fix gerrymandering, and it died in committee in every congressional session since 2017.
I would argue most of the elected representatives at the state and federal levels have no interest in fixing gerrymandering, because gerrymandering is what got them elected.
Missouri voted to get rid of gerrymandering. Of course the state overthrew it, and are now trying to crack another district because having a chokehold isn’t enough of an advantage.
We must do everything to tear down the republican traitor filth.
Yeah it really is fight fire with fire time
yes! Become the thing you wish to overcome.
Fuck off you gross loser, being intolerant of intolerance is quite fine in my book you deranged fucking weirdo
Chef’s kiss. Couldn’t have said it better
Lol going off of recent experiences. I figured I would get A Your comment has been removed warning for saying this, thank you for your support.
Oh shut up.
We’re past the point of being able to handle this any other way. We took the high road so many times the right can now set their watch to it. They understand that bad behavior will never be punished and “setting precedent” will mean nothing because Democrats will never use that precedent to act in a way that will give them any sort of unfair advantage.
If anyone has a way to defeat Republicans in a meaningful way without stooping to their level (gerrymandering, election denialism, obstruction, etc.) then I’d love to hear it. Otherwise, it’s time for the Democrats to roll up their sleeves and prepare to fight in the mud to save what little is left of American democracy. There’s still a chance to save the union without another civil war, but not if the opposition party doesn’t show the willingness to fight.
/signed.
Make it hurt. Stick it to the hilt and twist it.
There’s an internal cost to gerrymandering that the moderate Republicans are paying in spades. The Dick Cheney wing of the party drew all these cloistered bright-red districts, only to see neoconservatives forced out of the party by their distilled MAGA base 20 years later.
I think conservative Democrats (of which Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul are increasingly aligned) see a gerrymandered blue state majority presenting a similar threat. Rather than a rump caucus of Pelosis and Durbins and Cuomos, they’d be threatened with upstart campaigns from more Mamdanis and Soto-Martinezes and Ilhan Omars.
Who wants that?
So liberals will make noise about fighting fire with fire. But then they’ll sit on their hands, fully aware that a MAGA majority benefits conservative Dems who can present themselves as “the only other viable alternative” in purple districts. They don’t want to run more AOCs or Sanderses. They want more Slotkins and Schiffs and John Delaneys.
Hopefully they are starting to realize they don’t have a choice. Either run more AOCs or cede all power to Republicans.
Given how the party behaved in '20, '22, and '24, I think they’ve already made their choice.
I wonder how many Republicans would be unseated with rank choice voting…
Probably not as many as you think. People simply underestimate the amount of stupid people in the US and the extend to which people hate Democrats because of their spinelessness.
Even now, at the night of Trump’s bullshit, people hate Trump they don’t love Democrats.
Because the current democratic leadership has no ideas, has no vision other than the status quo.
They are fucking opposing progressive candidates like the NY mayor.
We’re truly fucked, stuck between fascists and neo cons disguised as Democrats.
The iron silo was erected in 1996 and we know they were working on it at least as far back as the '70s with Nixon, Ailes, Weyrich, et. al. The current conflict has not been contained within a culture war because the GOP does not want it to.
The redistricting war must happen next/now. Battle lines must be drawn out in open to reflect what the GOP has already implemented in secret in across the country. Bring it out in the open. Everything should be loud and obvious so nobody can hide from the reality of what happens next.
This is the game now. There are no refs; no fouls are going to be called. There’s no consequence or penalty for Trump redrawing the maps in Texas mid-decade. Stop pretending like there is.
The danger is not that Republicans will win. The danger is that the American tradition of democracy will be permanently damaged. Democrats can’t avert that by becoming part of the problem. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that the only victory possible is a victory won despite refusing to resort to tactics of this sort. Anything else is a defeat.
Do you think the American tradition of democracy has not been permanently damaged and will not continue to be permanently damaged by Republicans in the future? These are completely legal tactics as adjudicated by the Supreme Court. There are no prizes for going high except watching the country descend further into authoritarianism.
The American tradition of democracy is exactly that - a set of traditions built up over centuries. It is more than just the law. Republicans have done and continue to do serious, permanent damage, and the main way in which they do that damage is by violating those traditions. If the goal is to stop the damage, the means of attaining that goal has to include the defense of traditions.
The Democrats have been doing it your way for decades and we subsequently now have secret police putting people in concentration camps for slave labor. Your way already lost because traditions aren’t legally enforcable. We have to actually win first in order to then enshrine those traditions and standards as enforcable law.
Or, uphold the law, and fuck traditions. Rules and norms that aren’t a written part of the law got us into this mess. They aren’t going to get us out of it.
What you’re missing is that these traditions only exist as a peace treaty. Your attitude is precisely why that peace treaty has been broken. Your belief is why democratic norms have eroded so much.
Every democracy depends on both sides respecting democratic norms. It is impossible to write any law or constitution in a way that cannot be abused by bad-faith interpretations and bad-faith actors. Democracy only works if both sides come together and say, “well, we know we could find some twisted interpretation of the law to meet our goals, but the other side can do the same, so we’ll both just agree to follow reasonable norms. If we both keep doing this, both keep escalating, eventually we’ll end up killing each other.”
Democracy is a peace treaty. And you have forgotten this. It was this balance of power that enabled democracies to start in the first place. Ultimately, democracy is an alternative to civil war. We’re supposed to debate things in good faith instead of killing each other.
However, in recent years, Democrats have forgotten this. It’s the Obama disease, and your disease as well, the cowardly “they go low, we go high.” Well Republicans have realized that the balance of power no longer exists. They can violate any and every norm, and Democrats will simply turn around, bend over and take it, and never respond in kind. It’s this spineless, sniveling, submissive attitude that is currently destroying American democracy. Republicans can break norm, violate any peace treaty, and Democrats will simply tut tut and never respond in kind.
The thing about democracy is that again, it is a peace treaty. If you want democracy to survive, both sides need to be willing to escalate things all the way to the point of civil war. You need to be willing to return any escalation, all the way to the point of literally killing the other side if need be. Otherwise you just get trampled. Democracy is a balancing act. A tug of war. And Democrats like yourself have forgotten how to pull the rope.
You are responsible for the decline of American democracy.
The danger is that the American tradition of democracy will be permanently damaged
It already has been. There is no going back at this point without restructuring the entire government. We might as well do what we can now to stop what we can.
It already has been.
Ah. In for a penny, then?
Here you are being a deranged gross loser again.
Oh shut up.
Democrats can’t avert that
by becoming part of the problem.FTFY
The problem is already there: always was. Government was founded on sand: the rules for allocating votes were always unsound.
The danger is not that Republicans will win.
We literally have a masked police squad with more funding than most armies roaming the streets disappearing people including US citizens. Get your head out of the sand.
What traditions? The ones where “democracy” has been a long, bloody fight for anyone isn’t a specific kind of white person to get the right to vote? The ones where people vote for representatives that largely ignore them in favour of whichever rich person bribes them? The ones where gerrymandering have led to the GOP consistently losing the popular vote and still winning? The ones that saw Al Gore get the election stolen from under him in broad daylight with no consequences? The one that allows absurd levels of propaganda to flow and poison the country like raw sewage down a well?
The US wouldn’t know democracy if it were a freight train at full steam and the country was tied to the tracks. It’s a thin veneer we all know is full of shit.
If only Democrats would actually fight like they believe in something more important than “the process”.
America’s tradition of democracy is dead, and it was always kind of a joke anyways. If the Democrats want to revive democracy then let them start with their own fucked up primary process. They have complete control over that, and it’s even worse than the electoral collage fuckery.
The danger is that the American tradition of democracy will be permanently damaged
Republicans gaining power does damage, likely permanent damage. People will die. There’s a concentration camp. Like, what are you even thinking
It would be ideal to win without gerrymandering like it would’ve been ideal to become a nation without fighting a war with England.
Massive nitpick: Ideally America wouldn’t have become a nation at all, or at least not when it did. The reason the War of Independence happened was because Parliament massively bungled the issues the colonies had with tax policy, not because America was fulfilling its destiny of independence against the wishes of Great Britain. It was only after Britain thoroughly and consistently messed up that the independence movement started gaining real steam.
Nah, that’s horseshit. Sherman showed us how to respond to these traitorous freaks.
