General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWe are witnessing a national tantrum---a "hissy fit", if you will.
In state after state where Republicans dominate the legislature, whining, crying, foot-stomping political whores are drastically limiting who can vote, how they can vote and when they can vote. Because they understand that most voters reject them and their hateful policies, their goal is to so discourage and intimidate voters likely to vote for Democrats that Republican victories are assured before the polls even open.
And, just in case the Democrats so effectively "Get Out The Vote" that they ACTUALLY win the popular vote, the desperate Trump worshippers in some states are giving themselves the "legal authority" to simply step in and declare that the loser is the winner.
Understand, please, that if we permit this to determine our nations leadership, most now reading this will be actively persecuted. The Democratic Party will become an irrelevant footnote in the histories which will be written by the Steve Millers of the future.
Passing a federal election law is how we send these sore losers to "time out".
FoxNewsSucks
(10,723 posts)Last edited Sat Apr 17, 2021, 10:54 AM - Edit history (1)
HR1 needs to become law now.
Next year, courts pack by republicons will rule that it's "too close to the election" to make any changes block it from undoing what republicon scum are busy doing now
speak easy
(10,126 posts)It will be passed by a one off exercise of the nuclear option, keeping (and affirming) the filibuster for all other business of the current Senate.
Volaris
(10,440 posts)speak easy
(10,126 posts)It still means that urgent policy, like as the $15 minimum wage, and the Equality Act won't pass under this Senate. If the Dems can sideline Sinema and Manchin, by picking up pick up two or more Senators in 2022, (a big big ask) only then the filibuster can be put to rest.
Volaris
(10,440 posts)A one time use of the nuclear option (I dont think that will be used)
speak easy
(10,126 posts)I am going by the emphatic statements of the leadership group that S1. will pass. I don't expect them to show their hand until the time comes - why give a heads up to McConnell? One route would be a talking filibuster, but a one off nuclear option, that leaves the filibuster in place, is more direct.
In the end, I trust Leader Schumer when he says S1. will not fail - and he knows Manchin, better than I do.
Volaris
(10,440 posts)LymphocyteLover
(6,197 posts)I'm sure he does have some tricks up his sleeve.
calimary
(83,370 posts)Well be Zoom-calling in a few hours to put the next Call to Action email, and GUARANTEED this will be Subject A among the asks for next week. As it has been, every week, for at least a couple of months now. S.1 to the rescue!
S.1 - Get It DONE!
mopinko
(71,355 posts)and that's it. right there.
kentuck
(112,199 posts)Perhaps President Joe could appoint a Special Congressional Committee to work on it, with the major responsibilities in the hands of the Republicans.
Perhaps that would be something "bi-partisan" they could work on.
This is a job for Americans, not any political Party.
onetexan
(13,463 posts)ewagner
(18,967 posts)Has some merit but such a commission would have no authority and the results would end up in the same place: a recalcitrant Congress.
I think that would take too much time...remember that the Republicans are playing for the 2022 elections in which they hope to take back the Senate and perhaps the house. We need to act while we still have the majority ....if we don't and we let the state-infested legislatures implement these laws we will be ...as another post put it....a footnote in history.
True Blue American
(18,096 posts)Vote this week for all the nominees. I think they are fed up with the old nay sayers.
PortTack
(33,899 posts)A large portion of the newly passed laws will not stand in the courts even if we are unable to pass this into law
IronLionZion
(46,578 posts)considering how they're spreading COVID around in red counties. Democrats are mostly wearing masks and getting vaccinated.
DownriverDem
(6,452 posts)Michigan's Governor Whitmer can veto the 39 voter suppression bills passed by the repub controlled MI House and Senate.
Atticus
(15,124 posts)a "petition" signed by FOUR PERCENT of registered voters can enact a law which CANNOT BE VETOED!
Republican "democracy" in action.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)modrepub
(3,562 posts)Is who controls the government purse strings. Democratic control could prevent tax revenue transfers from the urban/suburban areas where most of it is generated to the rural areas, which probably receive more in government spending than they actually generate.
At least that is what I think is going on.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Response to Atticus (Original post)
Chin music This message was self-deleted by its author.
hay rick
(8,015 posts)Steve Miller wrote "Fly Like an Eagle"- exactly where we would be going if we were a healthy society.
Marcuse
(7,835 posts)Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats, said Michael Carvin, the lawyer defending the state's restrictions. Politics is a zero-sum game. And every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretation of Section 2 hurts us, its the difference between winning an election 50-49 and losing an election 51 to 50
"Wow," tweeted Wendy Weiser, a leading voting rights expert and vice president of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law. "This year, there is no longer a quiet part.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/supreme-court-gop-attorney-defends-voting-restrictions-saying-they-help-n1259305|
UCmeNdc
(9,635 posts)Write your congress people.
Response to UCmeNdc (Reply #14)
Chin music This message was self-deleted by its author.
ProudMNDemocrat
(18,275 posts)It is the way we continue to fight for the right to vote.
Education, Determination, and Persuasion....
Stacey Abrams needs our help.
lastlib
(24,289 posts)enshrining the right of ALL citizens over the age of 18 to vote. Tough to do, but necessary!
BobTheSubgenius
(11,711 posts)I want to send them to another time entirely. That's just wishful thinking, and your OP is spot on.
SidneyR
(101 posts)is the seeding of a fascist coup for 2024.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)tactics, including civil unrest and disorder (including opportunistic pandemic disease), violence, election theft, the big lie x several for years, and the huge lie to create demand for their coup d'etat now; but we don't really know what form of authoritarian government would replace our democracy. It's likely they'd hide it behind a democratic front which they controlled.
For a while. Some, such as the most virulent trumpists, are unquestionably open to a fascist dictatorship, and we've seen that could happen fast. And of course there is the very powerful Christian dominionist faction.
I believe most who've voted for Trump because he was the Republican candidate don't realize what they're part of, but some are suspecting and fearing.
Sigh. I could use a longer breather than until 2022, when they could take control of congress. The possibility that they could get control of enough states to call a constitutional convention is still something to fear.
uponit7771
(91,048 posts)... when it comes to the kGQP temper tantrums
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)gulliver
(13,296 posts)They have to "do something," because Trump and his numbskull voters are idiots and jerks who can't accept an election loss or even honor their pledges of allegiance. The laws being enacted have two effects: 1) Rig the next election and, 2) assert the last election was stolen.
That second one is a doozy. It's classic backward chaining, and it's the basis of conspiracy theory thinking. Start with what you want to believe, then support it in your mind by misremembering history. Once you've misremembered history, the next step is to act as if that history is true. Thus the Republican voter suppression laws.
Snackshack
(2,541 posts)The GOP has simply decided to go with a dictator lite strategy. That they have no issues that can win by popular vote so they are using our own system against what it is designed to support.
AllaN01Bear
(22,151 posts)Ilsa
(62,058 posts)were elected as well. Not as dangerous as what is happening now, but emotions setting behaviors into action to get where we are today.
lonely bird
(1,821 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)decided you were wrong because of the kind of change that occurred because we'd arrived at the edge of the abyss.
I won't bet we won't do it again, but if democracy "came apart," i.e., we failed to save it, I'd bet it'd happen not long from now. We came dreadfully close over the past four years.
lonely bird
(1,821 posts)After the rise of populism in the late 1800s we saw wealth scared. With the Great Depression we really saw wealth scared. FDR saved capitalism despite the capitalists. What didnt happen was change on the level of race. It still hasnt changed. We know hatred is taught. We know it is learned. What we have seen for the last 60 years are the fruits of Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, Leo Strauss, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. These people sought to maintain a system that rewards destruction and hatred. Trump was symptomatic and simply brought the fear and psychosis out into the open.
Looking back 400 years we see that the country, stolen from natives, was birthed in hatred. Hatred of natives, hatred of brown and black people, hatred of women, hatred of belief structures that were different. On and on. The so-called golden age of capitalism was not a golden age for the majority of people. Women were excluded, people of color were excluded. The attempts by LBJ to right some of the wrongs have been fought by conservatives for decades.
We must recognize that politics decides who gets what, when, where, how and why. As long as conservatism exists there will always be more losers than there should be. Today is far different than the 30s, 40s, 50s or 60s. I do not see a light at the end of a tunnel. We have open racists elected to Congress. We have white people claiming people of color are at fault for their own deaths.
God/Goddess save us from mediocre white people. That is said as an old white guy who cannot stand to see the forces that mediocre white people have unleashed. I live in Ohio and we now have another Republican shithead running to fill spineless Rob Portmans senate seat. Another fucking business man, Bernie Moreno, whose website bleats against SOCIALISM and Bernie and AOC and who whats to follow up Trumps success. Ohio has turned stupid.
Sorry for the long rant. On a related note I recommend three books: Nomadland, BagMan (about Spiro Agnews fall and related to the last 4 years) and Hateland which chronicles the rise of extremists and what drives them.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)our future's going to be, but I can't agree with your outlook on who we are or where we are and why.
Hateland, which is on my list but I haven't read yet, is about extremists and radicalization, not about "mediocre white people," and suggests ways in which the majorities who always either control extremism, or fail, can regain control. It's all about extremism, especially among the radical right who are always the planet's big troublemakers, without somehow conflating that with too many mediocre people of any color.
Btw, it's obvious that wherever human beings are, societies must inevitably contain overwhelming numbers of mediocre people, regardless of the prevailing skin color, as well as their shares of hard-right reactionaries. This is a huge problem for democratic republics that our founding fathers wincingly foresaw, and yet our own history is one of irregular but extremely real humanistic advances on all the important fronts, above all equality. Including during this century's anxious troubles.
Many change-driven fears are causing some people to overreact in various negative ways and grab at extreme solutions, peaceful and otherwise. And external enemies are making malignant use of new mass communications to defeat us by nonmilitary means, which include sophisticated new techniques to replace thinking in whole populations with fear-driven rage and despair. In America, they're weaponizing our very real internal problems, helping radical extremism along, including in the Republican Party, helping elect Trump, doing what they can to encourage factional and racist storms to turn as many as possible on each other and cause everyone to lose faith in ourselves and our nation, and to move disorder to chaos and collapse.
The Biden administration is racing to restore stability and widespread confidence in future wellbeing before one of the resultant swings to the brink takes us over. To put it prosaically, when and if more people of all colors are planning guaranteed annual vacations from jobs that provide the kind of stable incomes they were raised to believe are their right, and are assured that climate change is being handled so they're able to foresee stable futures, the anxieties that lead to extremism, including racial extremism, will calm down. Again.
And in spite of serious problems, we'll continue our move forward into the future of unprecedented wellbeing we can have if we will. Not a fairytale. There'll still be all the old problems too.
lonely bird
(1,821 posts)Yet, the radicalization of white men discussed in Hateland goes back to a host of issues including latching onto a belief that they are special because they are white. It must be someone elses fault that they have ended up the way they have. It is frightening to realize how fragile the human psyche is. And the impact of agitprop obviously can be devastating. It is equally frightening that the society we have created can generate the hate that it does due to, imo, a breakdown of social interaction.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Reading about Nazi Germany, and elsewhere, brought some realization, but it's different seeing it happen today, here.
But not all psyches are equally fragile or equally prone to hatred of others and to radicalization. The radicalized hatemongers of all races are outnumbered by everyone else, and notably the large majority are on the right, the ones on the left a small minority of the left and typically much less virulent.
Here we are as you say, but fore sure what's happening is more than just 2/3 or so of whites wanting to keep their white privilege, though their influence is seen in many ways. The content of social interaction that has broken down has been poisoned and set on fire by mostly white domestic leaders, assisted by pernicious influences from various enemies foreign and domestic, right and far left, for various reasons.
Notably, America's own hard-core conservative leaders had learned from the coming together during the Great Depression of liberals and conservatives to elect a strong liberal government that created, literally, a New Deal for them, a hated regulatory state that controlled and diminished their power and wealth. After that, conservative leaders set out to conquer by dividing the electorate.
They'd already succeeded even before they were able to combine the internet and modern psychological techniques into a weapon more powerful than ever before. Once they realized by the 1990s that they couldn't keep control through elections, they set out to take over and institute an authoritarian government they could control, using fascistic tactics proven to work in other nations. Those include encouraging the breakdown of society that we're living through right now. Radicalization is taking place among conservatives especially of all races and all places and feeding on itself. And of course the angry RW monster that had been created broke loose and found its own "strongman" in Trump, who furthered the original ends by actively fostering further breakdown. Our national tantrum. Like Nazi Germany's national tantrum, even though their target, the Jews, were only about 1% of the population.
Nice talking, Lonely Bird. I'm going to check out those other books you mentioned.
Trueblue Texan
(2,688 posts)...but the rabid right is silent about decimating voting rights across our nation.
ancianita
(37,606 posts)YoshidaYui
(42,245 posts)Are we in a civil war, and not realized it yet?
Pachamama
(16,934 posts)This is just the latest stage of the ongoing Civil War....
We have to stop this madness.
Evolve Dammit
(17,852 posts)Response to Atticus (Original post)
ancianita This message was self-deleted by its author.