Democratic National Committee vice chair David Hogg’s plan to spend $20 million to primary older Democratic incumbents in Congress has sparked intense anger from some lawmakers.
“What a disappointment from leadership. I can think of a million better things to do with twenty million dollars right now,” swing-district Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-Mich.) told Axios.
“Fighting Democrats might get likes online, but it’s not what restores majorities,” she added.
The issue is we get majorities and then nothing gets done with depresses turnout.
We don’t want to primary these old conservatives, we’d much rather them represent their constituents, but they’ve shown time and time again they won’t.
We’d rather they get out of the way and resign, but they won’t put the future of the party over their own personal power.
So fuck em.
I agree about “fuck em”, let’s get out with the old and in with the new.
But what majorities are you talking about? I keep seeing this repeated all over the internet- the sentiment that Democrats get nothing done when they have control. The problem is that I’m 33 years old and the Dems have only had control of the federal government for a few months of my life, and that’s when they passed the ACA. I can’t really make a judgement on what the Dems do when they’re in power because they largely have not been.
you owe it yourself to read up on american political history and; if you did; you would learn that every time they’ve had control of all 3 branches of government; they’ve squandered it by letting a one or 2 democrats derail all of their plans, meanwhile republicans steamroll over their own dissenters every time they’re in control.
you’d start to see that this pattern keeps happening again and again.
What times are these?
As I said, they have only had control for 4 months in my lifetime. Before that you need to go back to 1961-1969 with Kennedy and Johnson. I would actually need to do more research to find out whether they had a Supermajority or not, but it’s not even worth looking up because going that far back in time shifts the politics of the parties significantly and is not very relevant to today. The Democratic Party still has plenty of Southern Conservatives all the way into the Carter years.
So I would love to know what pattern you are seeing.
I think they’re including technical majorities that failed to effect meaningful change because of DINO shitbags like Manchin and Sinema.
The problem is that I’m 33 years old and the Dems have only had control of the federal government for a few months of my life, and that’s when they passed the ACA.
What?
We literally had it 2021-2023…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Congresses
And from 07 to 11…
What are you talk.ing about “a few months”?
They had control of the Presidency and the House of Representatives. I never said they didn’t have that- I said they didn’t have control of the Federal Government.
The Senate was tenuous. Just having 50 Dem Senators (well, that’s not true either because you need to include Independents to get to 50) isn’t good enough- you need 60 votes to have a filibuster-ptoof majority. The Dems just barely scraped that together in 2009, complicated in part by Ted Kennedy’s seizure and eventual death and Al Franken delayed in getting seated due to recounts. They only had 60 votes (still including Independents) from September 24th 2009 - February 4th, 2010. 4 months of controlling the federal government.
That is why when the 2008 financial crisis happened and the Dems wanted to pas a stimulus package in 2009, they had to get Snowe, Collins, and Spectre (who would leater switch parties to get them to 60) from the Republican side in order to get that passed.
They absolutely did not have control of the Supreme Court at any point in the Biden administration and the Republican SCOTUS shut down a lot of what the Biden administration tried to do. I remember checking every day for months to see how they would rule on Student Loan forgiveness, for example.
This is why they have the perception of being powerless- because they’ve pretty much never had the power. The Republicans love people who say the Democrats are useless. They love saying Biden didn’t do what he promised when he DID and the GOP-dominated Supreme Court reversed it. They love being able to stall Democrat legislation and blaming a Democrat president. Everything the Dems have done outside of those 4 months have required careful compromises and negotiation with the GOP to pass.
They had control of the Presidency and the House of Representatives. I never said they didn’t have that- I said they didn’t have control of the Federal Government
They also had 50 D senators and Harris as the tiebreaker…
They had the whole federal government for two years but didn’t get shit done because suddenly the guy who campaigned on being a literal “senate whisper” who said he could get R votes wasn’t able to get every D vote.
If you can’t understand 2021-2023, stop trying to cover earlier too.
We don’t have a parliamentary system where a party can kick out an elected member for not supporting the party’s agenda and replace them with someone else. Each member is individually elected to represent their state or district. For better or for worse, they get to decide what is best for their constituents and their constituents get to respond in the next election.
Joe Manchin was the major impediment in 2021-2023. He mostly supported the party’s agenda but had some sticking points. He had to be onboard with whatever passed given the razor thin majority.
I saw all these screeds about how he should be kicked out of the party, but the objective reality is there is very little you can do to pressure a centrist Democrat from a state that voted for Trump by 50 points. The only option available was to placate him and come to a compromise (which he ultimately agreed to for major climate change reduction investment).
The reality is that the Democratic Party is not monolithic, it has some centrists who don’t support some of the more ambitious goals of the party. If you want bigger action, you have to have a bigger majority. Slim majorities give small wings of the party outsized influence on policy.
Almost had me excited there until I tried to look to see if they named who they were going to primary… Source
We’ve been past the fume stage for a fucking while
Even the complaints against Hogg are just virtue signaling.
No action. Ever.
They are complicit.
Hogg is 100% right and they are just whining like babies when they should be doing their effing jobs.
Mistake for who? Not a mistake for me, not a mistake tactically considering the policy and popularity polling, not a mistake when you consider that these people have been suppressing popular and well polling progressive policies and candidates for decades and still managed to lose the presidency and both houses to a goddamn moron…
All of this shit, all of these “reasons” they list in opposition to Hogg’s initiative, they are all bullshit. Bullshit and deflections and distractions from the fact that they are concerned exclusively about the bottom line for their wealthy benefactors, and about their own as well. The irony that is not lost on anyone is that they are the assholes who did this to us in the first place, and would you look at that, Donald Trump is about to hand them a tax cut.
Both sides, the old guard is useless but he’s massively anti 2A, which is also not helpful right now.
Na the fascists are also going to need to get rid of the 2A soon. They don’t need headlines like “ICE impersonator shot by citizen while conducting an extra judicial abduction”
You can’t put that genie back in the bottle on any reasonable time scale, there’s more guns than people in the US, and half of them are basically invisible to authorities.
Both sides, the old guard is useless but
but here comes the excuse…
he’s massively anti 2A, which is also not helpful right now.
How convenient!
Only a fool would willingly disarm with fascist trying to take absolute power
I think it’s safe to say that the ancient Democrats who’ve been holding onto their seats by sheer force of incumbent political influence, contributed to turning Hogg into a school-shooting survivor. Obviously Republicans bear more responsibility thanks to their gun/violence fetish, but these Dems wouldn’t be so angry if he hadn’t touched a nerve. They’re clearly afraid of young people with new and rational ideas.
I hope these young’uns keep at it, their passion and drive is inspirational. Since the geriatrics in power clearly can’t smell their own bullshit anymore, fuck em. No one is entitled to power, you have to earn it like Hogg has through his dedicated activism. His organization has helped pass more than 250 gun safety laws, for example. He’s actually doing shit.
Not only that they’re afraid of both the real left and real right of young who can vastly transform the country for the better if they worked together
Which they are doing already. But if they do it even more on every level then that will be HUGE transformations every day not weeks or months or years or decades
The greatest strength the younger generations have is adaptability and having a clearer mind of what to focus on as a collective
They strength themselves, and even more so with others
That’s a great point. The party is only hurting itself in the short and long term by not welcoming younger candidates and trying to elect people who are actually willing to wield their power by trying shit out, rather than just further entrenching themselves by wielding their political influence. That’s the difference, the younger generations are willing to try out new policies and see if they work. That’s how this whole fucking system is supposed to function. Try something out, if it doesn’t work then too bad, you lose the next election and continue working on your ideas while the other party tries their shit out to see if their ideas work. We’ve strayed so far from that, that everyone is just accustomed to the government not trying big things, and nobody trusts that the other side would ever govern or compromise in good faith.
That’s why their anger is so frustrating to me. They’ve been there forever and done jack shit, and whine like children when someone young comes along and acts more mature by offering to fix the shit the elders have refused to.
They should have done this years ago. This opens the party to get republicans playing democrats to take over that party. We have seen this with at least 10 democrats constantly voting with republicans or a democrat completely switching parties during their term. Split the damn party or go home.
I love his energy, but I sincerely disagree with the whole gun control narrative right now. Leaning into that when there are about to be a shitload of far right militias deputized is an absolutely fucking idiotic plan.
Those laws wouldn’t get passed until this whole thing is over and there are progressives in office able to actually do things, if that happens. You wouldn’t have gun control as the law of the land in two months. And guns need to take a massive fucking back seat in America. No more blood cult shit, because that’s what it is.
Go for what you actually want, which is freedom. Freedom is when you aren’t surrounded by people with guns.
Gun control means: mandatory background checks, waiting periods, bans on previously convicted violent criminals owning guns, potentially magazine limits or limits on fully automatic licenses to specific users (like you may need to demonstrate you have proficiency and be a member of a gun club). None of this goes against “the right to bear arms”.
It does not mean nobody can buy guns or that guns are taken away - this is the fearmongering always pushed by the very conservative, very pro-Trump NRA.
Gun control seems to mean ‘a little more’. This comic is popular among gun owners because it reflects the feeling of constantly ratcheting ‘compromise’.
A perfect example of that is background checks. The original bill was a compromise, All gun sales at gun stores are required to have a background check, but the compromise is that private sales between one person and another are exempted. That was a negotiated compromise between the pro gun and anti-gun side. I think for the most part it was a decent compromise. But now the anti-gun side is trying to roll it back calling it the ‘gun show loophole’ which is horribly named because a gun dealer at a gun show has to do a background check anyway, and most gun shows require background checks for all sales either from a dealer or a private citizen.
The problem with universal background checks is the concept of a transfer. For example, under some proposals, if you want to lend somebody your hunting rifle to go hunting with, that might count as a transfer, which means you have to go to a gun store and pay about $50 and fill out paperwork to legally transfer ownership of the gun to them. And then when they return they have to transfer it back to you.
You should also know that an awful lot of gun owners absolutely hate the NRA. They serve a useful purpose, but their constant deranged rabble rousing fundraising makes gun owners look like paranoid morons.
What I would much prefer to do is outreach and education. An awful lot of gun control laws are based on a total misunderstanding of what guns do and how they work and what makes them powerful or not, I think if more Democrats actually understood guns you would see fewer attempts at bad laws that do nothing to increase safety but just try to turn the screws on gun owners.
I get it, but this is where he comes from, I thought the same thing you did until I read this.
So like… I was in my early thirties when this happened. I know. I remember. I watched some of the news livestreams as it went down.
I said what I said understanding that.
I am by no means trying to diminish, demean, discredit, disparage, or otherwise detract from his experience. Im saying that I am very fucking concerned that an actual war is coming, and disarming right before a war is a great fucking way to get killed.
Exactly. He has the right idea on this, but given his gun control background I don’t trust him any farther than I can throw him. Gun control is, at this point, nothing more than a way to lose votes. To an anti-gun liberal, gun control is good policy that saves lives. To a pro gun person, gun control is an unconstitutional civil rights violation that makes a candidate unlectable. This turns away an awful lot of pro-gun moderates from rural areas- these are the voters who make a difference in elections.
And as for the anti-gun base, and anti-gun moderates, what are they going to do, vote Republican in protest? Let’s be real.Gun control is a lose lose proposition
Where do I donate to David Hogg?
Frankly this is a good idea in the long term despite a possible short term loss.
The Tea Party hurt the Republicans in the short term, but they took over the party and purged the liberal elements. They replaced Eric Cantor with a speaker who does everything they want. They’re a monolithic block now and have been winning out on their strategies ever since.
AOC ousted 10-term congressman Joe Crowley in a primary by a huge margin. A few more of those couldn’t hurt.
I agree, we do need a “Guillotine Party” to do for us what the Tea Party did for the GOP.
Unfortunately, Hogg and gun control are part of what needs to be removed.
As always, there’s some excuse for why the person who is trying to move the party to the left shouldn’t be doing that.
It’s neat watching the party go from “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good! It’s just a little genocide!” to “This guy who is primarying centrists who hold us all back doesn’t agree with republicans enough!”
Of all of the people in this thread for whom the second amendment fills the void where a personality would be in a more complete person, not one cares about the incumbents’ opinions on firearms.
As always, there’s some excuse for why the person who is trying to move the party to the left shouldn’t be doing that.
I don’t know if you didn’t get the memo or something, but the left likes guns now. Gun control is not “moving the party to the left”. Gun control is a plank in the old, establishment platform, and needs to be thrown out along with those ancient fossils.
Of all of the people in this thread for whom the second amendment fills the void where a personality would be in a more complete person, not one cares about the incumbents’ opinions on firearms.
Nobody gives a shit about the incumbent positions on anything, with the possible exception of their retirement. Get them the hell out of office, and bring in some actual leftists.
Nobody gives a shit about the incumbent positions on anything, with the possible exception of their retirement. Get them the hell out of office, and bring in some actual leftists.
Provided that the person calling for it has the opinions you prefer on guns. And only guns.
Provided that the person calling for it has the opinions you prefer on guns. And only guns.
No, that conclusion does not follow from the facts at hand. There are any number of issues that raise my ire. I’ve railed just as vociferously against Hogg for guns as I have against any number of democratic fossils, for reasons ranging from pro-genocide, to appeasing Republicans, to senility. Gun control is just one of many disqualifying conditions. That he and I share an absolute disgust for Retired-in-Place Democrats is not sufficient to rehabilitate his image. He is an honorary fossil, and needs to go along with them.
Just seems like whenever there’s someone who is trying to get the party to move to the left, suddenly there’s some criterion for why they shouldn’t.
Bernie’s too old and that was a problem from 2016 until the second Biden announced. It’s a problem again now that Biden is out of office. AOC is a woman and that’s suddenly a problem because she’s seizing the moment. Hogg doesn’t agree with the NRA on guns.
There’s always some excuse.
Just seems like whenever there’s someone who is trying to get the party to move to the left,
Again, “gun control” is not a leftist issue. Gun control is keeping the party from moving left.
Further, Hogg isn’t trying to move the party to the left. He openly supports legacy Democrats like Pelosi and Hillary who built the failed party, and he is looking for younger candidates who will keep the party right where theose decrepit fossils planted it.
We should be doing this to every single motherfucker who clearly is doing insider trading.
I agree with the older Dems, but not for their reasons.
No, we should not support the candidates that Hogg supports. Because Hogg is very opposed to 2A rights, and ipso facto any candidate that he supports will also be opposed to 2A rights. And if you think that we’re gonna just vote our way out of this, I’ve got some very, very bad news for you.
Primary the old fucks with young leftists (hopefully ones that actually understand economics and tax policy)? Absolutely! Primary them with ones that ideologically aligned with Hogg? No.
Once they’re primaried, people can vote for whoever is the better candidate.
That was my gut instinct too, who is this kid, how did he get a vice chair position, and ya who are these young candidates and do they understand global economics, international relations, military. What roles in congressional comittees will they be qualified for. I’m tired of seeing morons overseeing nukes. Thats gotta stop.
He survived a school shooting. I think he has good reasons for wanting gun control. Although personally I agree that citizens need to be armed against our fascist state.
Most people are for gun control, branding yourself as anti 2A doesn’t really inspire hope that he can cross the aisle. It doesn’t have to be a toxic issue but it’s delicate. After checking the wiki he seems like he’s got some qualification. Left some room to be desired but I’ll judge the man by his work.
It’s clear Democrats aren’t interested in winning. Being a anti gun zealot is not going to win elections in the USA.
Democrats will not fight for me and my rights even in the best of times, so i would never in a trillion fucking years be okay with disarming. My body my choice in how I defend myself.
Six out of ten Americans favor stricter gun laws. Every year we lose the equivalent to a war in lives to gun violence. It is not just lives lost either. Millions of Americans live their lives in fear due to gun violence. Almost 60 percent of Americans know someone lost to gun violence.
Over 5 Million women are threatened by guns every year and we lose more children to gun deaths than the rest of the world combined. Guns are a cancer on our society.
How can you say democrats don’t do anything?
God the 2nd pic is cringe.
Bet they do more against primary challengers than they ever have or ever will against fascists.
“We can’t upset the fascists! We have to think of decorum!”
If the dude can raise $20 million he can do whatever the fuck he wants with it. Crybaby old farts need to get with the times.
??? Really you think that’s what the donors think when they send money to the DNC???
“Here’s my hard earned money please do what ever the fuck you want with it, efficacy be damned”
That actually explains a lot tbh. You might be on to something here!
“Here’s my hard earned money please do what ever the fuck you want with it, efficacy be damned”
I mean, that’s the response they expect from progressives.
Yea fair. I came around to it while typing my comment. I appreciate the insight it made me come to other enlightening conclusions.
I wish Lemmy could do gifs, cause I want to post the Michael Jackson eating popcorn from thriller so bad right now. Screw these feckless fucks! They have proven to be weak pieces of shit at every turn since Obama’s second term.
