It’s the structure of our “first past the post” system. Basically, each party gets one representative on the presidential ticket. The two major parties have primaries where the top candidates compete in a vote within themselves, and the winner gets put on the presidential ticket for that party.

The obvious problem with that is that the party convention picks the candidate, not the voters. So it’s possible to buy a party’s candidate or for the conventions to snub popular choice in favor of not shaking things up too much in the status quo.

The latter point, the democratic party picking lukewarm candidates that are moderate at best because the establishment doesn’t want to disturb the status quo, has been a problem for a long time and is a major reason democrat voters don’t go to the polls.

Not for the corporations that make money off of extorting a basic necessity from poor people! Won’t someone think of the corporations?

Or Woefully ignorant. I know some of those

As a fellow Louisianian, I’m here for it too. But I have strong doubts about it going anywhere.

Infrastructure expansion like trains

We’ll see. Congress doesn’t like the president spending money without their explicit approval. At this stage of planning, it’s little more than grandstanding by the president.

investing in education

See above. Congress undid Biden’s first attempt at debt relief. It’s still unclear if the second attempt will pan out. Cool if it does though. Still an if.

healthcare plans

The ACA really only pays out for people far enough below the poverty line that they basically don’t have income. My wife and I make $50k/year. Not even enough to own a house here. I still shell out $600/month for basic healthcare for two, with a $1000 deductible we each have to pay before the insurance even starts covering costs. And that’s considered a good plan. Deductibles can legally be as high as $10,000 per person before insurance starts paying anything.

The ACA isn’t exactly a shining achievement for democrats.

environmental programs

I’ll give you that one. My state is building and opening the largest carbon capture facility in the world so far, because of democratic policy.

etc

Etcetera is what people say when they run out of examples. By my count you’ve got 1 (one) example of good that democrats have done that has actually materialized and isn’t in jeopardy of failing as soon as someone actually has to approve the funding. Most democratic policies die in congress.

But of course you already know of all these so why do you need to ask the question?

No need to be an asshole, I’m just here demonstrating for you that the broad strokes you’re painting are not even close to the actual situation.

(I’m not even from USA myself, but your Republicans have such deranged policies that it spills over to us in impacts on trade, etc)

I’m with you on this one. Republicans are deranged in general. But it’s abundantly clear that you do not live here. Democrats had 3 years to do something constructive, and they mostly haven’t even managed to undo the damage Trump has done, let alone enact policies that benefit the majority of Americans.

In fact, democrats lost a major civil rights battle during their tenure (Roe v Wade) without even putting up a fight. I absolutely cannot blame democrat voters for being disappointed.

Bro, you dodged his question. He answered yours.

So how about instead of brushing him off with an insult, you actually pony up some good things you think democrats are doing that doesn’t just boil down to “well republicans would have done it worse”

Frankly, I’m on the side of voting democrats with the exact reasoning that Republicans will steer us into fascism. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they’re doing good, they just aren’t doing as much bad.

I can’t blame people who are disappointed with democrats as a whole, and I think it’s a reach to unironically take your position of voting for them because you think they have good policies.

My argument was that you can’t claim the moral high ground based on legality alone. I understand that nuance exists in the context, but moral high ground does not come from whether or not it’s legal.

I see what you’re getting at, but I think ‘moral high ground’ might not be the phrase you’re looking for.

Laws and morals are explicitly different. That’s why juries exist, so that a law may be put against the morals of a situation and the morals may prevail if need be.

Breaking the law isn’t necessarily immoral. It’s just illegal. So it isn’t like someone breaking the law is seeking to take the moral high ground in the first place, nor does that mean that someone who only ever follows the law always has the moral high ground. Lawful-evil does exist.

Precedent is nothing more to them than a tool to keep democrats down. Show me the last time a republican respected precedent when there was nothing in it for them.

Maybe that’s the point. Unity caves immediately to the big lawyers and says “Sorry guys, we tried. Looks like all you little studios will have to pay up after all. Blame Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft”

I bought my oneplus 10 pro for sub $500 during a sale, and it has usb3.1. It’s last year’s model. You can get a pixel 6 with usb3.1 for less than $400. A Galaxy S21 has usb3.2, less than $500.

That’s almost every major android brand for $500 or less with 3.1 or better. The cheapest you can buy an iPhone 15, the one with usb2.0, is $800. What are you on about?

And soon, the carrier pigeon breeders will start tagging them with tracking chips…

Maybe I framed that statement wrong. Of course they are the ones that say it the loudest. But it’s not them who introduced that mindset into conservative crowds. Just like the recent flare up of transphobia. They hear it from the top that trans folk are molesting children, or that immigrants are taking jobs, or whatever the thing is that keeps their ire off of the rich, and they spread it around their own circles because they need an out group to villify.

You haven’t noticed that hatred for these groups tend to be a conveniently-timed deflection from actual problems?

You’re describing the average conservative. The people who push the view that immigration is ruining the US aren’t average conservatives. They’re the ones who lie to conservatives to spin them into a rage in order to manipulate their vote. Those people are not themselves conservatives, but figureheads that collect a nice pretty penny from the rich folk to make sure the anger of their base never turns against the class whose fault everything actually is.

In short, as long as conservatives keep letting their talking heads tell them who to be mad at, they never will be furious at the ultra wealthy. And that’s by design.

That’s actually not strictly true. I read an expose a while back on exactly how McConnell campaigns. The reason why he has such a long-standing position in the Senate is because he campaigns to appeal to rural folk. Not that he puts out ads for rural folk or anything like traditional campaigning, but that he specifically has a division that keeps tabs on major events in small towns and always sends gifts and his regards and calls people out by name.

Things like graduations, funerals, groundbreaking on new buildings, festivals, weddings, etc. Things that tend to make big news in small towns, he makes it a point to put his name on and endorse. It works well enough that it earns him the vote without having to campaign in a traditional way.

I think the man is ruining our country, but he has his methodology for actually getting elected on lock.

I’m with you on that. Unfortunately, the reality is that that just means McConnell is going to stay in his post until he literally dies there. Republicans won’t make that kind of concession if it means losing that seat.

*have done

I seem to remember McConnell specifically whining about how unfair it was for Obama to appoint a replacement Supreme Court justice in the last few months of his term and denying Obama the opportunity, and then ramming his own party’s justice through when the tables had turned during Trump’s last months.

McConnell being replaced by a democrat against his party’s will would almost be poetic justice if he hadn’t have profoundly ruined our highest court in the process.

“If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”

We’ve been in the ‘constitutional crisis’ stage for awhile now

“As we say in Germany, if there’s a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 Nazis.”

There’s no excuse. If you are a voting republican, you are responsible for the ongoing train wreck of rights your party has become.

Put an [R] next to the campaign and your butthole has a fighting chance