But alienating our base so that we can lose elections to MAGA republicans is perfectly OK.

Obviously, the problem is with the voters, not us, say the Democrats.

My (great)-grandparents were part of the Dutch resistance during WW2. Along with a full 1.5% of the population.

Most people will not do anything, even if they are literally rounding up people for a genocide.

On the more positive side, a lot of people will support the resistance in small ways.

The number of people who actually, whole heartedly collaborated with the Nazi’s was quite small.

Even some of the German soldiers stationed in their village would turn a blind eye. Some of them realized they were on the wrong side and they just did the bare minimum of what they needed to do to not get in trouble and not get killed.

That would be more in line with the actual American tradition.

But personally, I would recommend to only allow filibusters in the House, which has a more proportional representation, and to not allow it in the Senate, which has the least proportional representation, even less than the electoral college.

Yep, all the electrical engineers who have chimed in say it looks more like explosives.

A battery would get hot and start a fire. It wouldn’t instantly explode like this.

I don’t think you understand how politics and elections work.

If people on the flanks give their voting power to “Blue (or Red) no matter who”, you end up with the Clintons and Bushes of the world. Parties have no incentive to actually do anything for their flanks.

When people on the flanks leverage their voting power effectively, you get MAGA and Justice Democrats.

Anyway, hope you learned something today. Otherwise, hope you have a nice day.

You have to look at the bigger picture, not the short term issue.

If progressives want to be taken seriously, and if Americans want AIPAC out of politics, then there have to be consequences.

If Latimer and Bell hold on to the seat, corporate and AIPAC Democrats only learn that they can take progressives for granted.

If they lose their seat, they learn that they need progressive support to win.

Yeah, two years of a republican rep will suck. But it’s only two years.

If the Democratic congressional candidate underperforms the Democratic presidential candidate, it definitely sends a signal.

Obviously, it only “sends a signal” if progressives say what they’re gonna do.

But it has a double whammy: Dems get a 2 vote difference when you switch.

Agreed, but also: if I were in their district (Bush or Bowman), I might even consider voting Republican out of spite.

Yes, AIPAC is to blame, but Democrats also need to grow a spine against AIPAC. They can’t just take progressive voters for granted.

For one, you can’t transfer a 401K to your kids.

You have to first cash it out, pay income tax and then you can transfer what remains.

Then you’ll need to educate yourself beyond what the government tells you.

Look up the ProPublica leaks. Someone is serving a very long jail time for leaking that out. It clearly shows how billionaires have very low taxable income, probably lower than yours.

To then say that you are upper class and Jeff Bezos is middle class is… Absurd.

The top 10% of income is not upper class. The error that people make, including you, is to focus on income.

People like Elon Musk have incomes smaller than $100K.

Upper class are the people who do not need to work and who live off of capital.

We need to shift our focus on wealth equality.

Look, the economy needs capital. If we want to be less dependent on the capital of rich people, then middle class people need to take over that role.

The people making $100-300K per year are key, because they can provide an alternative source of capital if their tax burden is lowered.

The people making $50K will not be able to provide large amounts of capital.

Yes, I fully agree.

So we need to find the right messaging.

I don’t know about Germany, but here in the Netherlands most people identify as middle class.

So “stop taxing the middle class” and “let the billionaires pay more” is a message that should resonate.

I’m optimistic and I believe we will get there. The level of equality we have today would be unfathomable for somebody living before 1945.

Which is why the tax system needs to be reformed.

The political right actually has one good point that we on the left don’t always appreciate: taxes on middle class people should be lower.

Specifically, very liberal tax exemptions on things like 401Ks, including the ability to transfer wealth across generations.

Combine that with higher taxes on the wealthy, and it will be possible to shift power to the middle class.

Consider the total market cap of the S&P 500, rounded up it’s about 50 trillion. Divide that among 130 million households and each household should own about $400K in stock on average.

Full equality is neither achievable nor desired by most people, so a good scheme would be to let every household hold up to $1M in wealth, tax exempt.

And then progressively tax everything above that.

And even if they didn’t care about Gaza, do Americans really want a foreign country to have so much influence on their elections and politicians?

Americans who care about America should want to get rid of AIPAC.

Can’t save the cultists, yes, but Independents do care.

And even though Indies are a minority, they are still the ones who decide the election outcome in every swing state.

So, good strategy by the Dems.

I know, but we were having a conversation about 2016 and the voters didn’t pick Clinton then.

At least, not enough of them in certain swing states.

You could also say, if the Democrats had nominated a more likeable candidate in 2016, we wouldn’t be here.

Clinton got less votes than Obama in 2012 and 2008, even though the population had grown during that time.

And it wasn’t the Bernie bros who stayed home. Polling revealed that the Bernie bros showed up.

Blaming the voters is like having your bakery go bankrupt and trying to blame people for not buying your shitty cake.

First, bake a better cake.

Exactly. Democrats are falling in line and that’s to be expected. They already voted for her as VP, so they should have no objection to her as President.

But independents and swing voters should still be undecided on her. Some might lean slightly towards her because she is younger and not a senile fascist, but overall, it should not be expected that they will support her at this stage.

Polling in September will be more accurate.

I’m having the same issue. I think they might be under an active DDoS attack and their DDoS protection is being very liberal in blocking devices.

I once read an expert on this and it seems they only need a very low amount of DNA samples (like 0.1% of the population) in the database to be able to narrow down any search to the sibling level.

And traditional detective work can then figure out which sibling, if there are multiple.

So yeah, the cat is out of the bag with this one.